


The River and I 



%. John G. Neihardt J^ 



fm 








CopightlJ^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The River and I 



By 

John G. Neihardt 

Author of "A Bundle of Myrrh," "Man-Song," etc. 



With 50 Illustrations 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Zbc 1knic??erbockcr press 

1910 






Copyright, igio 

BY 

JOHN G. NEIHARDT 



Ube 1ftnichcrboc{?cr ipress, flew 13orR 



L*CI.A2754iJ7 



^0 
MY MOTHER 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



I.— The River of an Unwritten Epic . i 

II —Sixteen Miles of Awe . . - 33 

III _Half-way to the Moon . . - 6o 

IV.— Making a Getaway . • • io6 

v.— Through the Region of Weir . .131 

YI —Getting Down to Business . • 172 

VII.— On to the Yellowstone . . .207 

VIII.— Down from the Yellowstone . • 260 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Night in Camp ..... Frontispiece 

"Off on the Perilous Floods" ... 5 
"Barriers Formed BEFORE him" . . . 9 
The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge . . 13 
After the Spring Break-up . . .17 

Black Eagle Falls ..... 37 
Great Falls from Cliff above ... 45 
Great Falls from the Front . . -49 

Old Fort Benton in the 70's ... 63 

"This Was Benton" 69 

The Ruins of Fort Benton . . . -73 
The House of the Bourgeois ... 77 
A Round-up Outfit on the March . . 81 

Joe 89 

Montana Sheep 93 

A Montana Wool-Freighter ... 97 
The "Atom I" under Construction . .101 
The Cable Ferry Towed us out . .121 

Laid up with a Broken Rudder . . .127 



VIU 



Illustrations 



Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri 

"Hole-in-the-Wall" Rock on Upper 
SOURI .... 

The Palisades of the Upper Missouri 

Fresh Meat! .... 

Supper! ..... 

Night in Camp .... 

Wolf Point, the First Town in Five 
DRED Miles .... 



Mis 



Hun 



Night on the Upper Missouri 

The Entrance to the Bad Lands 

"Walking" Boats over Shallows 

Reveille! ..... 

"Atom" Sailing up-stream in a Head- Wind 

Typical Upper Missouri River Reach 

A String of Assiniboine Pearls!. 

An Assiniboine Indian Chief 

An Assiniboine Indian Camp 

The Pen and Key Ranch . 

On the Hurricane Deck of the "Expan- 
sion": Capt. Marsh Third from the Left 



PAGE 

167 

189 

213 
217 

221 
225 
229 
233 
237 
241 

251 



Illustrations 



IX 



Crane Creek Irrigation Dam, up the Yellow- 
stone River ..... 255 

Steamboat "Expansion" on the Yellow- 
stone ....... 263 

Fort Union in 1837 267 

The Site of Old Fort Union . . . 271 

Deapolis, N.D.,the Site of Old Fort Clark. 285 

Washburn, North Dakota .... 289 

The Landing at Bismarck, N. D. . . 293 

The Boats Laid up for the Winter at Wash- 
burn, N. D 297 

Roosevelt's Ranch House; now in Posses- 
sion OF THE North Dakota Historical 
Society at Bismarck . . . .301 

Moonlight on the Missouri below the 

Yellowstone ..... 305 

Meeting a Steamboat in Mid-Stream . . 309 

The Mouth of the James River . . .313 

The Yankton Landing in the Old Days . 317 

"Atom II" Landing at Sioux City . .321 



THE RIVER AND I 



CHAPTER I 

THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC 

TT was Carlyle — was it not? — who said that 
^ all great works produce an unpleasant im- 
pression, on first acquaintance. It is so with 
the Missouri River. Carlyle was not, I think, 
speaking of rivers; but he was speaking of 
masterpieces — and so am I. 

It makes little difference to me whether or 
not an epic goes at a hexameter gallop through 
the ages, or whether it chooses to be a flood 
of muddy water, ripping out a channel from 
the mountains to the sea. It is merely a 
matter of how the great dynamic force shall 
express itself. 

I have seen trout streams that I thought 



2 The River and I 

were better lyrics than I or any of my fellows 
can ever hope to create. I have heard the 
moaning of rain winds among mountain pines 
that struck me as being equal, at least, to 
Adonais. I have seen the solemn rearing of a 
mountain peak into the pale dawn that gave 
me a deep religious appreciation of my signi- 
ficance in the Grand Scheme, as though I had 
heard and understood a parable from the holy 
lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my 
native country are as a mystic scroll unrolled, 
scrawled with a cabalistic writ of infinite 
things. 

In the same sense, I have come to look 
upon the Missouri as more than a river. To 
me, it is an epic. And it gave me my first big 
boy dreams. It was my ocean. I remember 
well the first time I looked upon my turbulent 
friend, who has since become as a brother to 
me. It was from a bluff at Kansas City. I 
know I must have been a very little boy, 
for the terror I felt made me reach up to 
the saving forefinger of my father, lest this 
insane devil-thing before me should suddenly 
develop an unreasoning hunger for little boys. 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 3 

My father seemed as tall as Alexander — and 
quite as courageous. He seemed to fear 
it almost not at all. And I should have felt 
little surprise had he taken me in his arms 
and stepped easily over that mile or so of 
liquid madness. He talked calmly about it — • 
quite calmly. He explained at what angle 
one should hold one's body in the current, and 
how one should conduct one's legs and arms 
in the whirlpools, providing one should swim 
across. 

Swim across! Why, it took a giant even to 
talk that way ! For the summer had smitten 
the distant mountains, and the June floods 
ran. Far across the yellow swirl that spread 
out into the wooded bottom-lands, we watched 
the demolition of a little town. The siege had 
reached the proper stage for a sally, and the 
attacking forces were howling over the walls. 
The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, 
outhouses, suddenly developed a frantic de- 
sire to go to St. Louis. It was a weird retreat 
in very bad order. A cottage with a garret 
window that glared like the eye of a Cyclops, 
trembled, rocked with the athletic lift of the 



4 The River and I 

flood, made a panicky plunge into a conven- 
ient tree; groaned, dodged, and took off 
through the brush Hke a scared cottontail. 
I felt a boy's pity and sympathy for those 
houses that got up and took to their legs across 
the yellow waste. It did not seem fair. I 
have since experienced the same feeling for a 
jack-rabbit with the hounds a-yelp at its heels. 

But — to swim this thing! To fight this 
cruel, invulnerable, resistless giant that went 
roaring down the world with a huge uprooted 
oak tree in its mouth for a toothpick! This 
yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth slaver- 
ing from its jaws! This dare-devil boy-god 
that sauntered along with a town in its pocket, 
and a steepled church under its arm for a 
moment's toy! Swim this? 

For days I marvelled at the magnificence of 
being a fullgrown man, unafraid of big rivers. 

But the first sight of the Missouri River was 
not enough for me. There was a dreadful 
fascination about it — the fascination of all 
huge and irresistible things. I had caught 
my first wee glimpse into the infinite; I was 
six years old. 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 7 

Many a lazy Sunday stroll took us back to 
the river; and little by little the dread became 
less, and the wonder grew — and a little love 
crept in. In my boy heart I condoned its 
treachery and its giant sins. For, after all, 
it sinned through excess of strength, not 
through weakness. And that is the eternal 
way of virile things. We watched the steam- 
boats loading for what seemed to me far 
distant ports. (How the world shrinks!) A 
double stream of ''roosters" coming and going 
at a dog-trot rushed the freight aboard; and 
at the foot of the gang-plank the mate swore 
masterfully while the perspiration dripped 
from the point of his nose. 

And then — the raucous whistles blew. 
They reminded me of the lions roaring at the 
circus. The gang-plank went up, the hawsers 
went in. The snub nose of the steamer 
swung out with a quiet majesty. Now she 
feels the urge of the flood, and yields herself 
to it, already dwindled to half her size. The 
pilot turns his wheel — he looks very big and 
quiet and masterful up there. The boat 
veers round ; bells jangle. And now the engine 



8 The River and I 

wakens in earnest. She breathes with spurts 
of vapor ! 

Breathed? No, it was sighing; for about it 
all clung an inexplicable sadness for me — the 
sadness that clings about all strong and beauti- 
ful things that must leave their moorings and 
go very, very far away. (I have since heard 
it said that river boats are not beautiful!) 
My throat felt as though it had smoke in it. 
I felt that this queenly thing really wanted 
to stay; for far down the muddy swirl where 
she dwindled, dwindled, I heard her sobbing 
hoarsely. 

Off on the perilous flood for ''faerie lands 
forlorn"! It made the world seem almost 
empty and very lonesome 

And then the dog-days came, and I saw 
my river tawny, sinewy, gaunt — a half- 
starved lion. The long dry bars were like 
the protruding ribs of the beast when the 
prey is scarce, and the ropy main current 
was like the lean, terrible muscles of its back. 

In the spring it had roared; now it only 
purred. But all the while I felt in it a dread- 
ful economy of force, just as I have since felt 









^^H 




1 



BARRIERS FORMED BEFORE HIM 

9 



The River of an Unwritten Epic n 

it in the presence of a great lean jungle-cat 
at the zoo. Here was a thing that crouched 
and purred — a mewing but terrific thing. 
Give it an obstacle to overcome — fling it 
something to devour; and lo! the crushing 
impact of its leap ! 

And then again I saw it lying very quietly 
in the clutch of a bitter winter — an awful 
hush upon it, and the white cerement of the 
snow flung across its face. And yet, this 
did not seem like death; for still one felt in it 
the subtle influence of a tremendous person- 
aHty. It slept, but sleeping it was still a 
giant. It seemed that at any moment the 
sleeper might turn over, toss the white cover 
aside and, yawning, saunter down the val- 
ley with its thunderous seven-league boots. 
And still, back and forth across this heavy 
sleeper went the pigmy wagons of the farmers 
taking corn to market ! 

But one day in March the far-flung arrows 
of the geese went over. Ilonk! honk! A 
vague, prophetic sense crept into the world 
out of nowhere — part sound, part scent, and 
yet too vague for either. Sap seeped from the 



12 The River and I 

maples. Weird mist-things went moaning 
through the night. And then, for the first 
time, I saw my big brother win a fight ! 

For days, strange premonitory noises had 
run across the shivering surface of the ice. 
Through the foggy nights, a muffled inter- 
mittent booming went on under the wild 
scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato 
crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, 
like the sequent bickering of Krags down a 
firing line. Long seams opened in the dis- 
turbed surface, and from them came a 
harsh sibilance as of a line of cavalry unsheath- 
ing sabres. 

But all the while, no show of violence — • 
only the awful quietness with deluge po- 
tential in it. The lion was crouching for 
the leap. 

Then one day under the warm sun a boom- 
ing as of distant big guns began. Faster and 
louder came the dull shaking thunders, and 
passed swiftly up and down, drawling into 
the distance. Fissures yawned, and the 
sound of the grumbling black water beneath 
came up. Here and there the surface Hfted 




BOATS WRECKED IN AN ICE GORGE 
13 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 15 

— bent — broke with shriekings, groanings, 
thunderings. And then 

The giant turned over, yawned and got to 
his feet, flinging his arms about him! Barri- 
ers formed before him. Confidently he set 
his massive shoulders against them — smashed 
them into little blocks, and went on singing, 
shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious 
victory. It made me very proud of my big 
brother. And yet all the while I dreaded 
him — just as I dread the caged tiger that I 
long to caress because he is so strong and so 
beautiful. 

Since then I have changed somewhat, 
though I am hardly as tall, and certainly 
not so courageous as Alexander. But I 
have felt the sinews of the old yellow giant 
tighten about my naked body. I have been 
bent upon his hip. I have presumed to throw 
against his Titan strength the craft of man. 
I have often swum in what seemed liquid 
madness to my boyhood. And we have be- 
come acquainted through battle. No friends 
like fair foes reconciled ! 

And I have lain panting on his bars, while 



i6 The River and I 

all about me went the lisping laughter of my 
brother. For he has the strength of a god, 
the headlong temper of a comet; but along 
with these he has the glad, mad, irresponsi- 
ble spirit of a boy. Thus ever are the epic 
things. 

. The Missouri is unique among rivers. I 
think God wished to teach the beauty of a 
virile soul fighting its way toward peace — 
and His precept was the Missouri. To me, 
the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber 
is a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a 
fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a mummy, 
periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a 
convenient geographical boundary line; the 
Hudson, an epicurean philosopher. 

But the Missouri — my brother — is the 
eternal Fighting Man! 

I love all things that yearn toward far 
seas: the singing Tennysonian brooks that 
flow by "Philip's farm" but "go on forever"; 
the little- Ik Walton rivers, where one may 
"study to be quiet and go a-fishing"! the 
Babylonian streams by which we have all 
pined in captivity; the sentimental Danubes 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 19 

which we can never forget because of "that 
night in June"; and at a very early age I 
had already developed a decent respect for 
the verbose manner in which the ''waters 
come down at Lodore." 

But the Missouri is more than a sentiment — 
even more than an epic. It is the symbol of 
my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike 
other souls. In it I see flung before me all 
the stern world-old struggle become materi- 
alized. Here is the concrete representation 
of the earnest desire, the momentarily frus- 
trate purpose, the beating at the bars, the 
breathless fighting of the half-whipped but 
never- to-be-conquered spirit, the sobbing of 
the wind-broken runner, the anger, the mad- 
ness, the laughter. And in it all the unweary- 
ing urge of a purpose, the unswerving belief in 
the peace of a far away ocean. 

If in a moment of despair I should reel for 
a breathing space away from the fight, with 
no heart for battle-cries, and with only a 
desire to pray, I could do it in no better 
manner than to lift my arms above the river 
and cry out into the big spaces: ''You who 



20 The River and I 

somehow understand — behold this river! It 
expresses what is voiceless in me. It prays 
forme!" 

Not only in its physical aspect does the 
Missouri appeal to the imagination. From 
Three Forks to its mouth — a distance of three 
thousand miles — this zigzag watercourse is 
haunted with great memories. Perhaps never 
before in the history of the world has a river 
been the thoroughfare of a movement so 
tremendously epic in its human appeal, so 
vastly significant in its relation to the de- 
velopment of man. And in the building 
of the continent Nature fashioned well the 
scenery for the great human story that was to 
be enacted here in the fulness of years. She 
built her stage on a large scale, taking no 
account of miles; for the coming actors were 
to be big men, mighty travellers, intrepid 
fighters, laughers at time and space. Plains 
limited only by the rim of sky; mountains 
severe, huge, tragic as fate; deserts for the 
trying of strong spirits; grotesque volcanic 
lands — dead , utterly ultra-human — where 
athletic souls might struggle with despair; 



The River of an ITnwritten Epic 21 

impetuous streams with their rapids terrible 
as Scylla, where men might go down fighting: 
thus Nature built the stage and set the scenes. 
And that the arrangements might be complete, 
she left a vast tract unfinished, where still 
the building of the world goes on — a place 
of awe in which to feel the mighty Doer of 
Things at work. Indeed, a setting vast and 
weird enough for the coming epic. And as the 
essence of all story is struggle, tribes of wild 
fighting men grew up in the land to oppose 
the coming masters; and over the limitless 
wastes swept the blizzards. 

I remember when I first read the words 
of Vergil beginning Uhi tot Simois, "where 
the Simois rolls along so many shields and 
helmets and strong bodies of brave men 
snatched beneath its floods." The far-see- 
ing sadness of the lines thrilled me; for it 
was not of the little stream of the JE:neid 
that I thought while the Latin professor 
quizzed me as to constructions, but of that 
great river of my own epic country — the 
Missouri. Was I unfair to old Vergil, think 
you? As for me, I think I flattered him a 



22 The River and I 

bit! And in this modern application, the 
ancient Hnes ring true. For the Missouri 
from Great Falls to its mouth is one long 
grave of men and boats. And such men! 

It is a time-honored habit to look back 
through the ages for the epic things. Modern 
affairs seem a bit commonplace to some of us. 
A horde of semi-savages tears down a town 
in order to avenge the theft of a faithless 
wife who was probably no better than she 
should have been — and we have the Iliad. 
A petty king sets sail for his native land, 
somehow losing himself ten years among the 
isles of Greece — and we have the Odyssey. 
(I would back a Missouri River "rat" to 
make the same distance in a row boat within 
a month!) An Argive captain returns home 
after an absence of ten years to find his wife 
interested overmuch in a trusted friend who 
went not forth to battle; a wrangle ensues; 
the tender spouse finishes her lord with an 
axe — and you have the Agamemnon. (To- 
day we should merely have a sensational 
trial, and hysterical scareheads in the news- 
papers.) Such were the ancient stories that 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 23 

move us all — sordid enough, be sure, when 
you push them hard for facts. But time and 
genius have glorified them. Not the deeds, 
but Homer and ^schylus were great. 

We no longer write epics — we live them. 
To create an epic, it has been said somewhere, 
the poet must write with the belief that the 
immortal gods are looking over his shoulder. 

We no longer prostrate ourselves before 
the immortal gods. We have long since dis- 
covered the divinity within ourselves, and 
so we have flung across the continents and 
the seas the visible epics of will. 

The history of the American fur trade 
alone makes the Trojan War look like a Punch 
and Judy show! and the Missouri River was 
the path of the conquerors. We have the 
facts — but we have not Homer. 

An epic story in its essence is the story of 
heroic men battling, aided or frustrated by 
the superhuman. And in the fur trade era 
there was no dearth of battling men, and 
the elements left no lack of superhuman 
obstacles. 

I am more thrilled by the history of the 



24 The River and I 

Lewis and Clark expedition than by the tale 
of Jason. John Colter, wandering three 
years in the wilderness and discovering the 
Yellowstone Park, is infinitely more heroic 
to me than Theseus. Alexander Harvey 
makes ^Eneas look like a degenerate. It was 
Harvey, you know, who fell out with the 
powers at Fort Union, with the result that 
he was ordered to report at the American Fur 
Company's office at St. Louis before he could 
be reinstated in the service. This was at 
Christmas time — Christmas of a Western 
winter. The distance was seventeen hun- 
dred miles, as the crow flies. "Give me a 
dog to carry my blankets," said he, "and 
by God I '11 report before the ice goes out!" 
He started afoot through the hostile tribes 
and blizzards. He reported at St. Louis 
early in March, returning to Union by the 
first boat out that year. And when he ar- 
rived at the Fort, he called out the man who 
was responsible for the trouble, and quietly 
killed him. That is the stern human stuff 
with which you build realms. What could 
not Homer do with such a man? And when 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 25 

one follows him through his recorded career, 
even Achilles seems a bit ladylike beside him! 
The killing of Carpenter by his treacherous 
friend, Mike Fink, would easily make a whole 
book of hexameters — with a nice assortment 
of gods and goddesses thrown in. There 
was a woman in the case — a half-breed. 
Well, this half-breed woman fascinates me 
quite as much as she whose face "launched a 
thousand ships and burnt the topless towers 
of Ilium"! In ancient times the immortal 
gods scourged nations for impieties; and, as we 
read, we feel the black shadow of inexorable 
fate moving through the terrific gloom of 
things. But the smallpox scourge that broke 
out at Fort Union in 1837, sweeping with 
desolation through the prairie tribes, moves 
me more than the storied catastrophes of old. 
It was a Reign of Terror. Even Larpen- 
teur's bald account of it fills me with the 
fine old Greek sense of fate. Men sickened 
at dawn and were dead at sunset. Every 
day a cartload or two of corpses went over 
the bluff into the river; and men became 
reckless. Larpenteur and his friend joked daily 



26 The River and I 

about the carting of the gruesome freight. 
They felt the irresistible, and they laughed 
at it, since struggle was out of the question. 
Some drank deeply and indulged in hysterical 
orgies. Some hollowed out their own graves 
and waited patiently beside them for the 
hidden hand to strike. At least fifteen 
thousand died — Audubon says one hundred 
and fifty thousand; and the buffalo in- 
creased rapidly — because the hunters were 
few. 

Would not such a story — here briefly 
sketched — move old Sophocles? 

The story of the half-breed woman^ — a 
giantess — who had a dozen sons, has about it 
for me all the glamour of an ancient yarn. 
The sons were free-trappers, you know, and, 
incidentally, thieves and murderers. (I sus- 
pect some of our classic heroes were as much !) 
But they were doubtless living up to the 
light that was in them, and they were game 
to the finish. So was the old woman; they 
called her ''the mother of the devils." Trap- 
pers from the various posts organized to 
hunt them down, and the mother and the sons 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 27 

barricaded their home. The fight was a 
hard one. One by one the ''devils" fell 
fighting about their mother. And then the 
besieging party fired the house. With all 
her sons wounded or dead, the old woman 
sallied forth. She fought like a grizzly and 
went down like a heroine. 

A sordid, brutal story? Ah, but it was life! 
Fling about this story of savage mother-love 
the glamour of time and genius, and it will 
move you, believe me! 

And the story of old Hugh Glass! Is it 
not fateful enough to be the foundation of a 
tremendous ^schylean drama? A big man 
he was — old and bearded. A devil to fight, 
a giant to endure, and an angel to forgive! 
He was in the Leavenworth campaign against 
the Aricaras, and afterward he went as a 
hunter with the Henry expedition. He had a 
friend — a mere boy — and these two were very 
close. One day Glass, who was in advance 
of the party, beating up the country for game, 
fell in with a grizzly ; and when the main party 
came up, he lay horribly mangled with the 
bear standing over him. They killed the bear, 



28 The River and I 

but the old man seemed done for; his face had 
all the features scraped off, and one of his 
legs went wobbly when they lifted him. 

It was merely a matter of one more man 
being dead, so the expedition pushed on, 
leaving the young friend with several others 
to see the old man under ground. But the 
old man was a fighter and refused to die, 
though he was unconscious: scrapped stub- 
bornly for several days, but it seemed plain 
enough that he would have to let go soon. 
So the young friend and the others left the 
old man in the wilderness to finish up the 
job by himself. They took his weapons and 
hastened after the main party, for the 
country was hostile. 

But one day old Glass woke up and got one 
of his eyes open. And when he saw how 
things stood, he swore to God he would live, 
merely for the sake of killing his false friend. 
He crawled to a spring near by, where he 
found a bush of ripe bull-berries. He waited 
day after day for strength, and finally started 
out to crawl a small matter of one hundred 
miles to the nearest fort. And he did it, too! 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 29 

Also he found his friend after much wandering 
— and forgave him. 

Fancy ^schylus working up that story 
with the Furies for a chorus and Nemesis 
appearing at intervals to nerve the old hero! 

And Rose the Renegade, who became the 
chief of a powerful tribe of Indians! And 
Father de Smet, one of the noblest figures in 
history, carrying the gospel into the wilder- 
ness! And Le Barge, the famous pilot, whose 
biography reads like a romance! In the his- 
tory of the Missouri River there were hun- 
dreds of these heroes, these builders of the 
epic West. Some of them were violent at 
times; some were good men and some were 
bad. But they were masterful always. They 
met obstacles and overcame them. They 
struck their foes in front. They thirsted 
in deserts, hungered in the wilderness, froze 
in the bHzzards, died with the plagues, and 
were massacred by the savages. Yet they 
conquered. Heroes of an unwritten epic! 
And their pathway to defeat and victory was 
the Missouri River. 

If you wish to have your epic spiced with 



30 The River and I 

the glamour of kings, the history of the river 
will not fail you; for in those days there 
were kings as well as giants in the land. 
Though it was not called such, all the blank 
space on the map of the Missouri River 
country and even to the Pacific, was one 
vast empire — the empire of the American 
Fur Company; and J. J. Astor in New York 
spoke the words that filled the wilderness 
with deeds. Thus democratic America once 
beheld within her own confines the paradox 
of an empire truly Roman in character. 

Here and there on the banks of the great 
waterway — an imperial road that would have 
delighted Caesar — many forts were built. 
These were the ganglia of that tremendous 
organism of which Astor was the brain. The 
bourgeois of one of these posts was virtually 
proconsul with absolute power in his terri- 
tory. Mackenzie at Union — which might 
be called the capital of the Upper Missouri 
country — was called "King of the Missouri." 
He had an eye for seeing purple. At one 
time he ordered a complete suit of armor 
from England ; and even went so far as to have 



The River of an Unwritten Epic 31 

medals struck, in true imperial fashion, to be 
distributed among his loyal followers. 

Far and wide these Western American kings 
flung the trappers, their subjects, into the 
wilderness. Verily, in the unwritten "Miss- 
ouriad" there is no lack of regal glamour. 

The ancients had a way of making vast 
things small enough to be familiar. They 
m_ade gods of the elements, and natural 
phenomena became to them the awful acts 
of the gods. 

These moderns made no gods of the ele- 
ments—they merely conquered them! The 
ancients ideaHzed the material. These mod- 
erns materialized the ideal. The latter 
method is much more appealing to me— an 
American — than the former. I love the 
ancient stories; but it is for the modern mar- 
vellous facts that I reserve my admiration. 

When one looks upon his own country as 
from a height of years, old tales lose something 
of their wonder for him. It is owing to this 
attitude that the prospect of descending the 
great river in a power canoe from the head 
of navigation gave me delight. 



32 The River and I 

Days and nights filled with the singing and 
muttering of my big brother ! And I would need 
only to close miy eyes, and all about me would 
come and go the ghosts of the mighty doers — 
who are my kin. Big men, bearded and pow- 
erful, pushing up stream with the cordelle on 
their shoulders! Voyageurs chanting at the 
paddles! Mackinaws descending with pre- 
cious freights of furs! Steamboats grunting 
and snoring up stream! Old forts sprung up 
again out of the dusk of things forgotten, with 
all the old turbulent life, where in reality 
to-day the plough of the farmer goes or the 
steers browse! Forgotten battles blowing by 
in the wind! And from a bluff's summit, here 
and there, ghostly war parties peering down 
upon me — the lesser kin of their old enemies — 
taking a summer's outing where of old went 
forth the fighting men, the builders of the 
unwritten epic! 



CHAPTER II 



SIXTEEN MILES OF AWE 



/^UR party of three left the railroad at 
^^^ Great Falls, a good two-days' walk 
up river from Benton, the head of Missouri 
River navigation, to which point our boat 
material had been shipped and our baggage 
checked. 

A vast sun-burned waste of buffalo-grass, 
prickly pears, and sagebrush stretched before 
us to the north and east ; and on the west the 
filmy blue contour of the High woods Moun- 
tains lifted like sun-smitten thunder clouds in 
the July swelter. One squinting far look, how- 
ever, told you that these were not rain clouds. 
The very thought of rain came to you with the 
vagueness of some birth-surviving memory of 
a former time. You looked far up and out 
to the westward and caught the glint of snow 
on the higher peaks. But the sight was 

3 33 



34 The River and I 

unconvincing; it was like a story told without 
the ''vital impulse." Always had these 
plains blistered under this July sun; always 
had the spots of alkali made the only white- 
ness; and the dry harsh snarl and snap of the 
grasshoppers' wings had pricked this torrid 
silence through all eternity. 

A stern and pitiless prospect for the amateur 
pedestrian, to be sure; for we devotees of the 
staff and pack have come to associate pedes- 
trianism with the idyllic, and the idyllic 
flourishes only in a land of frequent showers. 
Theocritus and prickly pears are not com- 
patible. Yet it was not without a certain 
thrill of exaltation that we strapped on our 
packs and stretched our legs after four days 
on the dusty plush. 

And though ahead of us lay no shady, 
amiably crooked country roads and bosky 
dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle 
over Hazlitt, yet we knew how crisscross 
cattle-trails should take us skirting down the 
river's sixteen miles of awe. 

Five hundred miles below its source, the 
falls of the Missouri begin with a vertical 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 35 

plunge of sixty feet. This is the Black Eagle 
Falls, presumably named so by Lewis and 
Clark and other explorers, because of the 
black eagles found there. 

With all due courtesy to my big surly 
grumbling friend, the Black Eagle Falls, I 
must say that I was a bit disappointed in 
him. Oh! he is quite magnificent enough, 
and every inch a Titan, to be sure; but of 
late years it seems he has taken up with 
company rather beneath him. First of all, 
he has gone to work in a most plebeian, almost 
slave-like fashion, turning wheels and making 
lights and dragging silly little trolley cars 
about a straggling town. Also, he hobnobs 
continually with a sprawling, brawling, bad- 
breathed smelter, as no respectable Titan 
should do. And on top of it all — and this 
was the straw that broke the back of my sen- 
timental camel — he allows them to maintain 
a park on the cliffs above him, where the 
merest white-skinned, counter- jumping pigmy 
may come of a Sunday for his glass of pop and 
a careless squint at the toiling Titan. Puny 
Philistines eating peanuts and watching 



36 The River and I 

Samson at his Gaza stunt! I hke it not. 
Rather would I see the Muse CHo peahng 
potatoes or Persephone busy with a banana 
cart! Enceladus wriggHng under a mountain 
is well enough; but Enceladus composedly 
turning a crank for little men — he seemed 
too heavy for that light work. 

Leaning on the frame observation platform, 
I closed my eyes, and in the dull roar that 
seemed the voices of countless ages, the park 
and the smelter and the silly bustling trolley 
cars and the ginger-ale and the peanuts and 
my physical self — all but my own soul — • 
were swallowed up. I saw my Titan brother 
as he was made — four hundred yards of 
writhing, liquid sinew, strenuously idle, mag- 
nificently worthless, flinging meaningless 
thunders over the vast arid plain, splendidly 
empty under sun and stars! I saw him as 
La Verendrye must have seen him — busy only 
at the divine business of being a giant. And 
for a moment behind shut eyes, it seemed 
very inconsequential to me that cranks should 
be turned and that trolley cars should run 
up and down precisely in the same place, 




BLACK EAGLE FALLS 
37 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 39 

never getting anywhere, and that there should 
be anything in all that tract but an austere 
black eagle or two, and my own soul, and my 
Titan brother. 

When I looked again, I could half imagine 
the old turbulent fellow winking slily at me 
and saying in that undertone you hear when 
you forget the thunders for a moment: " Don't 
you worry about me, little man. It 's all a 
joke, and I don't mind. Only to-morrow and 
then another to-morrow, and there won't be 
any smelters or trolley cars or ginger-ale or pea- 
nuts or sentimentalizing outers like yourself. 
But I '11 be here howling under sun and stars." 

Whereupon I posed the toiling philosopher 
before the camera, pressed the bulb, and des- 
scended from the summit of the cliff (as well 
as from my point of view) to the trail skirting 
northward up the river, leaving Enceladus 
grumbling at his crank. 

Perhaps, after all, cranks really have to be 
turned. Still, it seems too bad, and I have 
long bewailed it almost as a personal grief, 
that utility and ugliness should so often be 
running mates. 



40 The River and I 

They tell me that the Matterhorn never 
did a tap of work; and you could n't color one 
Easter egg with all the gorgeous sunsets of 
the world! May we all become, some day, 
perfectly useless and beautiful! 

At the foot of the first fall, a mammoth 
spring wells up out of the rock. Nobody 
tells you about it; you run across it by chance, 
and it interests you much more in that way. 
It would seem that a spring throwing out a 
stream equivalent to a river one hundred 
yards wide and two feet deep would deserve 
a little exploitation. Down East they would 
have a great white sprawling hotel built close 
by it wherein one could drink spring water (at 
a quarter the quart), with half a pathology 
pasted on the bottle as a label. But nobody 
seems to care much about so small an ooze 
out there: everything else is so big. And so 
it has nothing at all to do but go right on being 
one of the very biggest springs of all the 
world. This is really something; and I like 
it better than the quarter-per-quart idea. 

In sixteen miles the Missouri River falls 
four hundred feet. Incidentally, this stretch 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 41 

of river is said to be capable of producing 
the most tremendous water-power in the 
world. 

After skirting four miles of water that ran 
like a mill-race, we came upon the Rainbow 
Falls, where a thousand feet of river takes a 
drop of fifty feet over a precipice regular as a 
wall of masonry. This was much more to 
my liking — a million horse-power or so busy 
making rainbows ! Bully! 

It was a very hot day and the sun was now 
high. I sat down to wipe the sweat out of 
my eyes. (One does not perspire in July up 
there ; one sweats!) I wished to get acquainted 
with this weaver of iridescent nothings who 
knew so well the divine art of doing nothing 
at all and doing it good and hard! After all, 
it isn't so easy to do nothing and make it 
count ! 

And in the end, when all broken lights 
have blended again with the Source Light, 
I 'm not so sure that rainbows will seem less 
important than rows and rows of arc lights 
and clusters and clusters of incandescent 
globes. Are you.^ I can contract an indefin- 



42 The River and I 

able sort of heartache from the blue sputter 
of a city light that snuffs out moon and stars 
for tired scurrying folks: but the opalescent 
mist-drift of the Rainbow Falls wove 
heavens for me in its sheen, and through its 
whirlwind rifts and crystal flaws, far reaches 
opened up with all the heart's desire at the 
other end. You shut your eyes with that 
thunder in your ears and that gusty mist on 
your face, and you see it very plainly — more 
plainly than ever so many arc lights could 
make you see it — the ultimate meaning of 
things. To be sure, when you open your 
eyes again, it 's all gone — the storm-flung 
rainbows seem to hide it again. 

A mile below, we came upon the Crooked 
Falls of twenty feet. Leaving the left bank, 
and running almost parallel with it for some 
three hundred yards, then turning and making 
a horseshoe, and returning to the right bank 
almost opposite the place of first observation, 
this fall is nearly a mile in length, being an 
unbroken sheet for that distance. This one, 
also, does nothing at all, and in a beautifully 
irregular way. Somehow it made me think 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 43 

of Walt Whitman! But we left it soon, 
swinging out into the open parched country. 
We knew all this turbulence to be merely the 
river's bow before the great stunt. 

As we swung along, kicking up the acrid 
alkali dust from the cattle-trail that snaked 
its way through the cactus and sagebrush, 
the roar behind us died; and before us, far 
away, dull muffled thunders grew up in the 
hush of the burning noon. Thunders in a 
desert, and no cloud! For an hour we swung 
along the trail, and ever the thunders in- 
creased — like the undertone of the surf when 
the sea whitens. We were approaching the 
Great Falls of the Missouri. There were no 
sign posts in that lonesome tract; no one of 
whom to ask the way. Little did we need 
direction. The voice of thunder crying in 
the desert led us surely. 

A half -hour more of clambering over shale- 
strewn gullies, up sun-baked watercourses, 
and we found ourselves toiling up the ragged 
slope of a bluff; and soon we stood upon a 
rocky ledge with the thunders beneath us. 
Damp gusts beat upward over the blistering 



44 The River and I 

scarp of the cliff. I lay down, and crawling 
to the edge, looked over. Two hundred feet 
below me — straight down as a pebble drops 
— a watery Inferno raged, and far-flung 
whirlwinds, all but exhausted with the dizzy 
upward reach, whisked cool, invisible mops 
of mist across my face. 

Flung down a preliminary mile of steep 
descent, choked in between soaring walls of 
rock four hundred yards apart, innumerable 
crystal tons rushed down ninety feet in one 
magnificent plunge. You saw the long bent 
crest — shimmering with the changing colors of 
a peacock's back — smooth as a lake when all 
winds sleep; and then the mighty river was 
snuffed out in gulfs of angry gray. Capri- 
cious river draughts, sucking up the damp 
defile, whipped upward into the bHstering 
sunlight gray spiral towers that leaped into 
opal fires and dissolved in showers of diamond 
and pearl and amethyst. 

I caught myself tightly gripping the ledge 
and shrinking with a shuddering instinctive 
fear. Then suddenly the thunders seemed 
to stifle all memory of sound — and left only 




GREAT FALLS FROM CLIFF ABOVE 
45 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 47 

the silent universe with myself and this terri- 
bly beautiful thing in the midst of utter 
emptiness. And I loved it with a strange, 
desperate, tigerish love. It expressed itself 
so magnificently; and that is really all a man, 
or a waterfall, or a mountain, or a flower, 
or a grasshopper, or a meadow lark, or 
an oeean, or a thunderstorm has to do in 
this world. And it was doing it right 
out in the middle of a desert, bleak, sun- 
leprosied, forbidding, with only the stars and 
the moon and the sun and a cliff-swallow or 
two to behold. Thundering out its message 
into the waste places, careless of audiences — 
like a Master! Bully, grizzled old Master- 
Bard singing — as most of them do — to empty 
benches! And it had been doing that ten 
thousand thousand years, and would do so for 
ten thousand thousand more, and never pause 
for plaudits. I suspect the soul of old Homer 
did that — and is still doing it, somehow, some- 
where. After all there is n't much difference 
between really tremendous things — Homer or 
waterfalls or thunderstorms — is there? It 's 
only a matter of how things happen to be big. 



48 The River and I 

I was absent-mindedly chasing some big 
thundering line of Sophocles when Bill, the 
little Cornishman, ran in between me and 
the evasive line: "Lord! what a waste of 
power!" 

There is some difference in temperaments. 
Most men, I fancy, would have enjoyed a 
talk with a civil engineer upon that ledge. 
I should have liked to have Shelley there, 
myself. It 's the difference between poetry 
and horse-power, dithyrambics and dynamos, 
Keats and Kipling! What is the energy 
exerted by the Great Falls of the Missouri? 
How many horse-power did Shelley fling into 
the creation of his West Wind? How many 
foot-pounds did the boy heart of Chatterton 
beat before it broke? Please leave something 
to the imagination! 

We backtrailed to a point where the cliff 
fell away into a rock-strewn incline, and clam- 
bered down a break-neck slope to the edge 
of the crystal broil. There was a strange 
exhilaration about it — a novel sense of dis- 
covering a natural wonder for ourselves. 
We seemed the first men who had ever been 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 51 

there: that was the most gripping thing 
about it. 

Aloof, stupendous, terrific, staggering in 
the intensity of its wild beauty, you reach 
it by a trail. There are no 'busses running 
and you can't buy a sandwich or a peanut 
or a glass of beer within ten miles of its 
far-flung thunders. For twentieth century 
America, that is doing rather well! 

Skirting the slippery rocks at the lip of the 
mad flood, we swung ourselves about a ledge, 
dripping with the cool mist-drift; descended 
to the level of the lower basin, where a 
soaking fog made us shiver; pushed through 
a dripping, oozing, autumnal sort of twilight, 
and came out again into the beat of the desert 
sun, to look squarely into the face of the 
giant. 

A hawk wheeled and swooped and floated far 
up in the dazzling air. Somehow that hawk 
seemed to make the lonely place doubly lonely. 
Did you ever notice how a lone coyote on a 
snow-heaped prairie gives you a heartache, 
whereas the empty waste would only have 
exhilarated you? Always, it seemed, that 



52 The River and I 

veering hawk had hung there, and would 
hang so always — outliving the rising of suns 
and the drifting of stars and the visits of the 
moon. 

A vague sense of grief came over me at the 
thought of all this eternal restlessness, this 
turbulent fixity; and, after all, it seemed much 
greater to be even a very little man, living 
largely, dying, somehow, into something big 
and new; than to be this Promethean sort of 
thing, a giant waterfall in a waste. 

I have known men who felt dwarfed in the 
presence of vast and awful things. I never 
felt bigger than when I first looked upon the 
ocean. The skyward lift of a mountain peak 
makes me feel very, very tall. And when a 
thunderstorm comes down upon the world 
out of the northwest, with jagged blades of 
fire ripping up the black bellies of the clouds, 
I know all about the heart of Attila and the 
Vikings and tigers and Alexander the Great! 
So I think I grew a bit, out there talking 
to that water-giant who does nothing at all — 
not even a vaudeville stunt — and does it so 
masterfully. 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 53 

By and by they '11 build a hotel in the flat 
at the edge of the lower basin; plant prim 
flowers in very prim beds; and rob you on 
the genteel European plan. Comfortably sit- 
ting in a willow chair on the broad veranda, one 
will read the signs on those cliffs — all about 
the best shoes to wear, and what particular 
pill of all the pills that be, should be taken 
for that ailing kidney. But it will not be I 
who shall sit in that willow chair on that 
broad, as yet unbuilt, veranda. 

The sun was glinting at the rim of the cliffs, 
and the place of awe and thunders was slowly 
filling with shadow. We found a steep trail, 
inaccessible for vehicles, leading upward 
in the direction of Benton. It was getting 
that time of day when even a sentimentalist 
wants a beefsteak, especially if he has hiked 
over dusty scorching trails and scrambled 
over rocks all day. 

Some kind man back in the town, with a 
fund of that most useless article, information, 
had told us of a place called Goodale, theoreti- 
cally existing on the Great Northern Railroad 
between Great Falls and Benton. We had 



54 The River and I 

provided only for luncheon, trusting to fate 
and Goodale for supper. 

Goodale! A truly beautiful name! No 
doubt in some miraculous way the character 
of the country changed suddenly just before 
you got there merely to justify the name. 
Surely no one would have the temerity to 
conjure up so beautiful a name for a desert 
town. Yet, half unwillingly, I thought of a 
little place I once visited — against my will, 
since the brakeman put me off there — by the 
name of Forest City. I remembered with 
misgivings how there wasn't a tree within 
something like four hundred miles. But I 
pushed that memory aside as a lying prophet. 
I believed in Goodale and beefsteak. Goodale 
would be a neat, quiet little town, set snugly 
in a verdant valley. We would come into it 
by starlight — down a careless gypsying sort of 
country road; and there would be the sound 
of a dear little trickling bickering cool stream 
out in the shadows of the trees fringing 
the approach to Goodale. And we'd pass 
pretty little cottages with vines growing 
over the doors, and hollyhocks peeping 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 55 

over the fences, and cheerful lights in the 
windows. 

Goodale! And then, right in the middle 
of the town (no, milage — the word is cosier 
somehow) — right in the middle of the village 
there would be a big restaurant, with such 
alluring scents of beefsteak all about it. 

I set the pace up that trail. It was a 
swinging, loose, cavalry-horse sort of pace — 
the kind that rubs the blue off the distance 
and paints the back trail gray. Goodale was 
a sort of Mecca. I thought of it with some- 
thing like a religious awe. How far was 
Goodale, would you suppose? Not far, cer- 
tainly, once we found the railroad. 

We made the last steep climb breath- 
lessly, and came out on the level. A great, 
monotonous, heartachy prairie lay before 
us — utterly featureless in the twihght. Far 
off across the scabby land a thin black line 
swept out of the dusk into the dusk — 
straight as a crow's flight. It was the rail- 
road. We made a cross-cut for it, tum- 
bling over gopher holes, plunging through 
sagebrush, scrambling over gullies that told 



56 The River and I 

the incredible tale of torrents having been 
there once. I ate quantities of alkali dust 
and went on believing in Goodale and beef- 
steak. Beefsteak became one of the princi- 
pal stations on the Great Northern Railroad, 
so far as I was concerned personally. That 
is what you might call the geography of a 
healthy stomach. 

With the falling of the sun the climate of the 
country had changed. It was no longer 
blistering. You sat down for a moment 
and a shiver went up your spine. At noon I 
thought about all the lime-kilns I had ever met. 
Now I could hear the hickory nuts dropping 
in the crisp silence down in the old Missouri 
woods. 

We struck the railroad and went faster. 
Since my first experience with railroad ties, I 
have continued to associate them with hunger. 
I need only look an ordinary railroad tie in 
the face to contract a wonderful appetite. 
It works on the principle of a memory 
system. So, as we put the ties behind us, 
I increased my order at that restaurant 
in the sweet little pedestrian's village of 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 57 

Goodale. "A couple of eggs on the side, 
waiter," I said half audibly to the petite 
woman in the white apron who served the 
tables in the restaurant there. She was 
very real to me. I could count the rings 
on her fingers; and when she smiled, I noted 
that her teeth were very white — doubtless 
they got that way from eating quantities and 
quantities of thick juicy beefsteak! 

The track took a sudden turn ahead. 
''Around that bend," said I aloud, "lies 
Goodale." We went faster. We rounded 
the bend, only to see the dusky, heartachy, 
barren stretch. 

"Railroads," explained I to myself, "have 
a way of going somewhere; it is one of their 
peculiarities." No doubt this track had been 
laid for the express purpose of guiding hungry 
folks to the hospitable little village. We 
plunged on for an hour. Meanwhile my 
orders to the trim little woman in the white 
apron increased steadily. She smiled broadly 
but winsomely, showing those charming beef- 
steak-polished teeth. They shone like a beacon 
ahead of me, for it was now dark. 



58 The River and I 

Suddenly we came upon a signboard. We 
went up to it, struck a match, and read breath- 
lessly — '' GOODALE." 

We looked about us. Goodale was a switch 
and a box car. 

Nothing beside remains, 

I quoted audibly: 

'round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 

Alas for the trim little lady with the white 
teeth and the smile and the beefsteak ! 

We said bitter things there in that waste 
about the man with the information. We 
loaded his memory with anathemas. One 
cannot eat a signboard, even with so inviting 
a name upon it. An idea struck me — it 
seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. 
I sat down and delivered myself of it to my 
companions, who also had lusted after the 
flesh-pots. "We have wronged that man 
with the information," said I. "He was no 
ordinary individual; he was a prophet: he 
simply got his dates mixed. In precisely one 



Sixteen Miles of Awe 59 

hundred years from now, there will be a town 
on this spot — and a restaurant! Shall we 
wait?" 

They eursed me bitterly. I suspeet neither 
of them is a philosopher. Thereat I proceeded 
to eat a thiek juicy steak from the T-bone 
portion of an unborn steer, served by the 
trim little lady of a hundred years hence, 
there in that potential village of Goodale. 
And as I smoked my cigarette, I felt very 
thankful for all the beautiful things that do 
not exist. 

And I slept that night in the great front 
bedroom, the ceiling of which is of diamond 
and turquoise. 



CHAPTER III 

HALF-WAY TO THE MOON 

A T last the sinuous yellow road dropped 
over the bluff rim and, to all appear- 
ances, dissolved into the sky — a gray-blue, 
genius-colored sky. 

It was sundown, and this was the end of 
the trail for us. Beneath the bluff rim lay 
Benton. We flung ourselves down in the 
bunch-grass that whispered drily in a cool 
wind fresh from the creeping night-shade. 
Now that Benton lay beneath us, I was in 
no hurry to look upon it. 

Fort Benton ? What a clarion cry that name 

had been to me! Old men — too old for 

voyages — had talked about this place; a long 

time ago, 'way down on the Kansas City 

docks, I had heard them. How far away it 

was then! Reach after reach, bend after 

bend, grunting, snoring, toiling, sparring 

60 



Half- Way to the Moon 6i 

over bars, bucking the currents, dodging 
the snags, went the snub-nosed steamers — 
brave Uttle steamers! — forging on toward 
Fort Benton. And it was so very, very far 
away — half-way to the moon no doubt! St. 
Louis was indeed very far away. But Fort 
Benton ! 

Well, they spoke of the Fort Benton traffic 
as "the mountain trade," and I had not then 
seen a mountain. You could stand on the 
very tallest building in Kansas City, and you 
could look and look and never see a mountain. 
And to think how far the brave little steamers 
had to go! How did they ever manage to 
get back? 

But the old men on the docks — they had 
been there and all the way back, perhaps 
hundreds of times. And they were such 
heroes! Great paw-like hands they had, 
toughened with the gripping of cables; 
eyes that had that way of looking through 
and far beyond things. (Seamen and plains- 
men have it.) And they had such romantic, 
crinkly, wrinkly, leathery faces. They got 
so on the way to Benton and back. And 



62 The River and I 

they talked about it — those old men lounging 
on the docks — because it was so far away and 
they were so old that they could n't get there 
any more. 

What a picture I made out of their kaleido- 
scopic chatter; beautifully inaccurate, im- 
possibly romantic picture, in which big 
muscley men had fights with yawping painted 
savages that always got gloriously licked, in 
the approved story-book manner! I could 
shut my eyes and see it all very plainly, away 
off there half-way to the moon. And I used 
to wonder how my father could be such a 
strong man and never have any hankering 
to go up there at all! The two facts were 
quite incompatible. He should have been a 
captain and taken me on for cub pilot, or at 
least a ''striker" engineer; though I wouldn't 
have objected seriously to the business of a 
cabin boy. I thought it would be very nice 
to engage in the mountain trade. 

And then, after a while, in the new light that 
creeps in with years, I began to rearrange 
my picture of things up there; and Benton 
crept a wee bit closer — until I could see its 



Half-Way to the Moon 65 

four adobe walls and its two adobe bastions, 
stern with portholes, sitting like bulldogs 
at the opposite corners ready to bark at 
intruders. And in and out at the big gate 
went the trappers — sturdy, rough-necked, 
hirsute fellows in buckskins, with Northwest 
fusils on their shoulders; lean-bodied, capable 
fellows, with souls as lean as their bodies, 
survivors of long hard trails, men who could 
go far and eat little and never give up. I 
was very fond of that sort of man. 

Little by little the picture grew. Indian 
bull boats flocked at the river front beneath the 
stern adobe walls; moored mackinaws swayed 
in the current, waiting to be loaded with pel- 
tries and loosed for the long drift back to the 
States; and keel-boats, looking very fat and 
lazy, unloaded supplies in the late fall that were 
loaded at St. Louis in the early spring. And 
these had come all the way without the stroke 
of a piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or 
a pound of steam. Nothing but grit and man- 
muscle to drag them a small matter of two or 
three thousand miles up the current of the most 
eccentric old duffer of a river in the world ! 



66 The River and I 

What men it did take to do that! I saw 
them on the wild shelterless banks of the 
yellow flood — a score or so of them — stripped 
and sweating under the prairie sun, with the 
cordelle on their calloused shoulders, straight- 
ening out to the work like honest oxen. What 
males those cordelle men were — what stayers I 
Fed on wild, red meat, lean and round of 
waist, thick of chest, thewed for going on to 
the finish! Ten or fifteen miles a day and 
every inch a fight ! Be sure they did n't do 
it merely for the two or three hundred dollars 
a year they got from the Company. They 
did it because they were that sort of men, and 
had to express themselves. Everything worth 
while is done that way. 

Do they raise that breed now? Never 
doubt it! You need only find your keel- 
boats or their equivalents, and the men will 
come around for the job, I 'm sure. But when 
you speak enthusiastically of the old Greek 
doers of things, I 'd like to put in a few words 
for those old up-river men. They belong to 
the unwritten American epic. 

And then the keel-boats and the bull-boats 



Half^Way to the Moon 67 

and the mackinaws and the up-river men 
flashed out — Hke a stereopticon picture when 
the man moves the sHde; and I saw a little 
ragged village of log houses scattered along 
the water front. I saw the levees piled with 
merchandise, and a score or more of packets 
rushing fresh cargoes ashore — mates bawling 
commands down the gangplanks where the 
roustabouts came and went at a trot. Gold- 
mad hundreds thronged the wagon-rutted 
streets of this raw little village, the commer- 
cial centre of a vast new empire. Six-horse 
freighters trundled away toward the gold 
fields; and others trundled in, their horses 
jaded with the precious freight they pulled. 
And I saw steamers dropping out for the long 
voyage back to the States, freighted with 
cargoes of gold dust — really truly story-book 
treasure-ships that would have made old 
Captain Kidd's men mad with delight. 

As I lay dreaming in the bunch-grass, it all 
grew up so real that I had to get up and take 
my first look, half expecting to find it all 
there just as in the old days. 

We stood at the rim of the bluff and looked 



68 The River and I 

down into a cup -like valley upon a quiet 
little village, winking with scattered lights 
in the gloaming. Past it swept the river — 
glazed with the twilight and silver-splotted 
with early stars. 

This was Benton — it could have been almost 
any other town as well. And yet, once upon 
a time, it had filled my day-dreams with 
wonders — this place that seemed half-way 
to the moon. 

The shrill shriek of a Great Northern 
locom.otive, trundling freight cars through 
the gloom, gave the death-stroke to the old 
boy-dream. It was the cry of modernity. 
This boisterous, bustling, smoke-breathing 
thing, plunging through the night with flame 
in its throat, had made the change, dragged 
old Benton out of the far-off lunar regions 
and set what is left of it right down in the 
back yard of the world. Even a very little 
boy could get there now. 

''And yet," thought I, as we set out rapidly 
for the village in the valley, ''the difference 
between the poetry of mackinaws and Great 
Northern locomotives is merely a matter of 



i'j^'f'L^'.'^-y^:^.^::.^ 




Half- Way to the Moon 71 

perspective. If those old cordelle men could 
only come back for a while from their 
Walhalla, how they would crowd about that 
wind-splitting, fire-eating, iron beast, panting 
from its long run, and catching its breath for 
another plunge into the waste places and the 
night! And I? I would be gazing wide- 
mouthed at the cordelle men. It's only the 
human curiosity about the other side of the 
moon. How perfect the nights would be if 
we could only see that lost Pleiad!" 

Ankle-deep in the powdery sand, we entered 
the little town with its business row facing the 
water front. One glance at the empty levees 
told you of the town's dead glory. Not a 
steamboat's stacks, blackening in the gloom, 
broke the peaceful glitter of the river under 
the stars. But along the sidewalk where 
the electric-lighted bar-rooms buzzed and 
hummed, brawny cow-men, booted and 
spurred, lounged about, talking in that odd 
but not unpleasant Western English that 
could almost be called a dialect. 

But it was not the Benton of the cow-men 
that I felt about me. It was still for me the 



72 The River and I 

Benton of the fur trade and the steamboats 
and the gold rush — my boyhood's Benton 
half-way to the moon — the ghost of a dead 
town. 

At Goodale I had sought a substantial town 
and found a visionary one. At Benton I had 
sought a visionary town and found a substan- 
tial one. Philosophy was plainly indicated as 
the proper thing. And, after all, a steaming 
plate of lamb chops in a Chinese chuck-house 
of a substantial though disappointing town, 
is more acceptable to even a dreamer than 
the visionary beefsteak I ate out there in that 
latent restaurant of a potential village. 

This was a comfortable thought; and for a 
quarter of an hour, the far weird cry of things 
that are no more, was of no avail. The 
rapid music of knife and fork drowned out 
the asthmatic snoring of the ghostly packets 
that buck the stream no more. How grub 
does win against sentiment ! 

Swallowing the last of the chops, ''Where 
will I find the ruins of the old fort?" I 
asked of my bronze-faced neighbor across 
the wreck of supper. He looked bored and 



Half- Way to the Moon 75 

stiffened a horny practical thumb in the 
general direction of the ruins. "Over there,'* 
he said laconically. 

I caught myself wondering if a modern 
Athenian would thus carelessly direct you to 
the Acropolis. Is the comparison faulty? 
Surely a ruin is sacred only for what men did 
there. We are indeed a headlong race. We 
keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is 
why we get somewhere. And yet, what 
beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward 
gaze! Music and poetry — all the deepest, 
purest sentiments of the heart — are fed 
greatly upon the memory of the things that 
were but can never be again. Mnemosyne 
is the mother of all the Muses. 

I got up and went out. By the light of a 
thin moon, I found the place ''over there." 
An odd, pathetic little ruins it is, to be sure. 
Nothing imposing about it. It does n't 
compel through admiration: it wooes through 
pity — the great, impersonal kind of pity. 

"A single little turret that remains 
On the plains" — 

Browning tells about all there is to tell 



76 The River and I 

about it, though he never heard of it; only 
they called it a ''bastion" in old days — the 
little square adobe blockhouse that won't 
stand much longer. One crumbHng bastion 
and two gaunt fragments of adobe walls in a 
waste of sand beside the river — that's Fort 
Benton. 

A thin pale grudging strip of moon lit it up: 
just the moon by which to see ruins — a moon 
for backward looking and regrets. A full 
round love-moon would n't have served at all. 

Out of pure moon-haze I restored the walls 
of the house where the bourgeois lived. The 
fireplace and the great mud chimney are 
still there, and the smut of the old log fires 
still cHngs inside. The man who sat before 
that hearth was an American king. A simple 
word of command spoken in that room was the 
thunder of the law in the wilderness about 
and men obeyed. There 's a bat living there 
now. He timibled about me in the dull light, 
filling the silence with the harsh whir of pinions. 

I thought about that night a long, long 
time ago when all the people under the pro- 
tection of the newly erected fort, gathered 




THE HOUSE OF THE BOURGEOIS 
77 



Half- Way to the Moon 79 

here for a house-warming. How clearly I 
could hear that squawking, squeaking, good- 
natured fiddle and the din of dancing feet! 
Only the sound got mixed up with the dim, 
weird moonlight, until you did n't know 
whether you were hearing or seeing or feel- 
ing it — the music of the fiddles and the feet. 
Oh, the dim far music! 

I thought about the other ruins of the 
world, the exploited, tourist-haunted ruins; 
and I wondered why the others attract so 
much attention while this one attracts prac- 
tically none at all. How they do dig after 
old Troy — poor old long-buried, much-abused 
Troy! And nobody even cares to steal a 
brick from this ruined citadel that took so 
great a part in the American epic. Indeed, 
you would not be obliged to steal a brick; 
there are no guards. 

Some one has said that the history of our 
country as taught in the common schools is 
the history of a narrow strip of land along the 
Atlantic coast. The statement is significant. 
The average school-teacher knows very little 
about Fort Benton, I suspect. 



8o The River and I 

And yet, one of the most tremendous of all 
human movements centred about it — the 
movement that brought about the settlement 
of the Northwest. One of these days they 
will plant a potato patch there ! 

But modern Benton? 

Get on a train in the East, snuggle up in 
your berth, plunge on to the Western coast, 
and you run through the real West in the 
night. They are getting Eastern out there 
at the rim of the big sea. Benton is in the 
West — the big, free, heart-winning West; and 
it gives promise of staying there for a while 
yet. 

Charter a bronco and canter out across 
the river for an hour, and it will be very plain 
to you that the romantic West still lives — 
the West of the cowboy and the bronco and 
the steer. Not the average story-book West, 
to be sure. Perhaps that West never existed. 
But it is the West that has bred and is still 
breeding a race of men as beautiful in a virile 
way (and how else should men be beautiful?) 
as this dear old mother of an Earth ever 
suckled. 



Half- Way to the Moon 83 

I stood once on the yellow slope of a hill 
and watched a round-up outfit passing in the 
gulch below. Four-horse freighters grumbling 
up the dusty trail; cook wagons trundling 
after; whips popping over the sweating teams; 
a hundred or more saddle ponies trailing 
after in rolling clouds of glinting dust; a 
score of bronze-faced, hard-fisted outriders, 
mounted on gaunt, tough, wise little horses — 
such strong, outdoor, masterful Americans, 
truly beautiful in a big manly way! 

The sight of it all put that glorious little 
achy feeling in my throat that you get when 
they start the fife and drum, or when a 
cavalry column wheels at the word of com- 
mand, or when a regiment swings past with 
even tread, or when you stand on a dock and 
watch a liner dropping out into the fog. It 's 
the feeling that you 're a man and mighty 
proud of it. But somehow it always makes 
you just a little sad. 

I felt proud of that bunch of strong capable 
fellows — proud as though I had created them 
myself. 

And once again the glorious little achy 



84 The River and I 

feeling in the throat came. The Congressman 
from Choteau County had returned from 
Washington with fresh laurels; and Benton 
turned out to welcome her Great Man. 
Down the dusty, poorly lighted, front street 
came the little band — a shirt-sleeved squad. 
Halting under the dingy glow of a corner 
street-lamp, they struck up the best-inten- 
tioned, noisiest noise I ever heard. The tuba 
raced Itmiberingly after the galloping cornet, 
that ran neck-and-neck with the wheezing 
clarinet; and the drums beat up behind, 
pounding like the hoofs of stiff-kneed horses 
half a stretch behind. 

It was a mad, exciting race of sounds — 
a sort of handicap. The circular glow of the 
street-lamp became the social centre of Benton. 
At last the mad race was ended. I think it 
was the cornet that won, with the clarinet a 
close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, 
complacently claimed third money, and the 
bass-drum finished last with a shameless, 
resolute boom ! 

A great hoarse cry went up — probably for 
the winning cornet; a big-lunged, generous, 



Half-Way to the Moon 85 

warrior cry that made you think of a cavalry 
charge in the face of bayonets. And the 
shirt-sleeved band swung off down the 
street in the direction of the little cottage 
where the Great Man lived. All Benton 
fell in behind — clerks and bar-keeps and sheep- 
men and cowboys tumbling into fours. Under 
the yellow flare of the kerosene torches they 
went down the street like a campaigning com- 
pany in rout step, scattering din and dust. 

Great, deep-chested, happy-looking, open 
air fellows, they were; big lovers, big haters, 
good laughers, eaters, drinkers — and every 
one of them potentially a fighting man. 

And suddenly, as I watched them pass, 
something deep down in me cried out: 
"Great God! What a fighting force we can 
drum up out of the cactus and the sagebrush 
when the time comes!" And when I looked 
again, not one of the sun-bronzed faces was 
strange to me, but every one was the face of 
a brother. Choteau's Congressman was my 
Congressman! Benton's Great Man was my 
Great Man! I fell into line alongside a big 
bronco-buster with his high - heeled boots 



86 The River and I 

and his clanking spurs and his bandy-legged, 
firm-footed horseman's stride. Thirty yards 
farther on we were old comrades. That is 
the Western way. 

Once again the little band struck up a 
march, which was very little more than a 
rhythmic snarling and booming of the dnmis, 
with now and then the shrill savage cry of the 
clarinet stabbing the general din. Irresisti- 
bly the whole line swung into step. 

What is it about the rhythmic stride of 
many men down a dusty road that grips you 
by the throat and makes your lungs feel like 
overcharged balloons? I felt something like 
the maddening, irritating tang of powder- 
smoke in my throat. Trumpet cries that I 
had never heard, yet somehow dimly remem- 
bered, wakened in the night about us — far 
and faint, but haughty with command. It 
took very little imagination for me to feel 
the whirlwind of battles I may never know, to 
hear the harsh metallic snarl of high-power 
bullets I may never face. For, marching 
there in the dusty, torch - painted night, 
with that ragged procession of Westerners, 



Half-Way to the Moon 87 

a deep sense of the essential comradeship of 
free men had come upon me; and I could 
think of these men in no other way than as 
potential fighting men — the stern hard stuff 
with which you build and keep your empires. 
What a row little old Napoleon could have 
kicked up with half a million of these sage- 
brush boys to fling foeward under his cannon- 
clouds ! 

We reached the cottage of the Great Man 
with the fresh laurels. He met us at the 
gate. He called us Jim and Bill and Frank 
and Kid something or other. We called him 
Charlie. And he wasn't the least bit stiff 
or proud, though we hadn't the least doubt 
that half of Washington was in tears at his 
departure for the West. 

The sudden flare of a torch betrayed his 
moist eyes as he told us how he loved us. 
And I 'm sure he meant it. He said, with that 
Western drawl of his: "Boys, while I was 
back there trying to do a little something for 
you in Congress, I heard a lot of swell bands; 
but I did n't hear any such music as this little 
old band of ours has made to-night!" The 



88 The River and I 

unintentional htimor somehow did n't make 
you want to laugh at all. 

We're all riding with his outfit; and next 
year we 're going to send Charlie back East 
again. May we all die sheepmen if we don't 
— and that 's the limit in Montana! 

Talking about sheepmen, reminds me of 
Joe, the big bronco-buster, and his mot. I 
was doing the town with Joe, and he was 
carefully educating me in the Western mys- 
teries. He told me all about ' ' day- wranglers ' ' 
and "night-hawks" and "war-bags" and 
"round-ups"; showed me how to tie a "bull- 
noose" and a "sheep-shank" and a "Mexican 
hacamore"; put me onto the twist-of-the- 
wrist and the quick arm-thrust that puts 
half -hitches 'round a steer's legs; showed 
me how a cowboy makes dance music with a 
broom and a mouth -harp — and many other 
wonderful feats, none of which I can myself 
perform. 

I wanted to feel the mettle of the big typical 
fellow, and so I said playfully: "Say, Joe, come 
to confession — you 're a sheepman, now 
are n't you?" 



Half- Way to the Moon 91 

He clanked down a glass of long-range 
liquid, and glared down at me with a monitory 
forefinger pointing straight between my eyes: 
''Now you look here, Shorty," he drawled; 
''you're a friend of mine, and whatever you 
say, goes, as long as I ain't all caved in! But 
you cut that out, and don't you say that out 
loud again, or you and me '11 be having to 
scrap the whole outfit!" 

He resumed his glass. I told him, still 
playfully, that a lot of mighty good poetry 
had been written about sheep and sheepmen 
and crooks and lambs and things like that, 
and that I considered my question compli- 
mentary. 

"You 're talkin' about sheepmen in the 
old country. Shorty," he drawled. "There 
ain't any cattle ranges there, you know. Do 
you know the difference between a sheep- 
man in Scotland, say, and in Montana?" 

I did not. 

"Well," he proceeded, "over in Scotland 
when a feller sees a sheepman coming down 
the road with his sheep, he says: 'Behold 
the gentle shepherd with his fieecy flock 1* 



92 The River and I 

That's poetry. Now in Montana, that same 
feller says, when he sees the same feller 
coming over a ridge with the same sheep: 
'Look at that crazy hlankety -blank with his 
wooliesT That's fact. You mind what I 
say, or you'll get spurred." 

I don't quite agree with Joe, how- 
ever. Once, lying in my tent across the 
river, I looked out over the breaks through 
that strange purple moonlight, such as I had 
always believed to exist only in the staging 
of a melodrama, and saw four thousand sheep 
descending to the ferry. 

Like lava from a crater they poured over 
the slope above me; and above them, seeming 
prodigiously big against the weird sky, went 
the sheepman with his staff in his hand and 
a war-bag over his arm, while at his heels a 
wise collie followed. It was a picture done 
by chance very much as Millet could have 
done it. And somehow Joe's mot couldn't 
stand before that picture. 

There is indeed a big Pindaric sort of poetry 
about a plunging mass of cattle. And just 
as truly there is a sort of Theocritus poetry 



Half-Way to the Moon 95 

about sheep. Only in the latter case, the 
poetical vanishing point is farther away for 
me than is the case with cattle. I think I 
couldn't write very good verses about a flock 
of sheep, unless I were at least five hundred 
yards from them. I haven't figured the 
exact distance as yet. But when you have 
a large flock of sheep camping about you all 
night, making you eat fine sand and driving 
you mad with that most idiotic of all noises 
(which happened once to me), you don't get 
up in the morning quoting Theocritus. You 
remember Joe's mot! 

We found a convenient gravel bar on the 
farther side of the river, where we established 
our navy-yard. There we proceeded to set 
up the keel of the Atom I — a twenty-foot 
canoe with forty-inch beam, lightly ribbed 
with oak and planked with quarter-inch 
cypress. 

No sooner had we screwed up the bolts in 
the keel, than our ship-yard became a sort 
of free information bureau. Every evening 
the cable ferry brought over a contingent of 



9^ The River and I 

well-wishers, v/ho were ardent in their desire 
to encourage us in our undertaking, which 
was no less than that of making a toboggan 
sHde down the roof of the continent. 

The salient weakness of the gejius homOy 
it has always seemed to me, is an overwhelm- 
ing desire to give advice. Through several 
weeks of toil, we were treated to a most lib- 
eral education on marine matters. It ap- 
peared that we had been laboring under a 
fatal misunderstanding regarding the general 
subject of navigation. Our style of boat 
was indeed admirable — for a lake, if you 
please, but — well, of course, they did not wish 
to discourage us. It was quite possible that 
we were unacquainted with the Upper Mis- 
souri. Now the Upper River (hanging out 
the bleached rag of a sympathetic smile), 
the Upper River was not the Lower River, 
you know. (That really did seem remarkably 
true, and we became alarmed.) The Upper 
River, mind you, was terrific. Why, those 
frail ribs and that impossible planking would 
go to pieces on the first rock — like an egg- 
shell! Of course, we were free to do as we 



Half- Way to the Moon 99 

pleased — they would not discourage us for 
the world. And the engine! Gracious! 
Such a boat would never stand the vibration 
of a four-horse, high-speed engine driving a 
f ourteen-inch screw ! It appeared plainly that 
we were almost criminally wrong in all our 
calculations. Shamefacedly we continued to 
drive nails into the impossible hull, knowing 
full well — poor misguided heroes — that we 
were only fashioning a death trap! There 
could be no doubt about it. The free informa- 
tion bureau was unanimous. It was all very 
pathetic. Nothing but the tonic of an habit- 
ual morning swim in the clear cold river kept 
us game in the face of the inevitable ! 

We saw it all. With a sort of forlorn, 
cannon-torn-cavalry-column hope we pushed 
on with the fatal work. Never before did I 
appreciate old Job in the clutches of good 
advice. I used to accuse him of rabbit 
blood. In the light of experience, I wish to 
record the fact that I beg his pardon. He 
was in the house of his friends. I think 
Job and I understand each other better now. 
It was not the boils, but the free advice ! 



loo The River and I 

■ At last the final nail was driven and clenched , 
the canvas glued on and ironed, the engine 
installed. The trim, slim little craft with 
her admirable speed lines, tapering fore and 
aft like a fish, lay on the ways ready for the 
plunge. 

We had arranged to christen her with beer. 
The Kid stood at the prow with the bottle 
poised, awaiting his cue. The little Cor- 
nishman knelt at the prow. He was not 
bowed in prayer. He was holding a bucket 
under the soon-to-be-broken bottle. ''For," 
said he, "in a country where beer is so dear 
and advice so cheap, let us save the beer 
that we may be strong to stand the advice!" 

The argument was indeed Socratic. 

''And now, little boat," said I, in that dark 
brown tone of voice of which I am particu- 
larly proud, "be a good girl! Deliver me 
not unto the laughter of my good advisers. 
I christen thee Atom!''' 

The bottle broke — directly above that 
bucket. 

And now before us lay the impossible as 
plainly pointed out, not only by local talent, 



Half-Way to the Moon 103 

but by no less a man than the august captain 
of a government snag-boat. Several weeks 
before the launching, an event had taken 
place at Benton. The first steamboat for 
sixteen years tied up there one evening. She 
was a government snag-boat. Now a gov- 
ernment snag-boat may be defined as a boat 
maintained by the government for the sole 
purpose of navigating rivers and dodging snags. 
This particular snag-boat, I learned after- 
ward in the course of a long cruise behind her, 
holds the snag-boat record. I consider her 
pilot a truly remarkable man. He seemed 
to have dodged them all. 

All Benton turned out to view the big 
red and white government steamer. There 
was something almost pathetic about the 
public demonstration when you thought 
of the good old steamboat days. During 
her one day's visit to the town, I met the 
captain. 

He was very stiff and proud. He awed 
me. I stood before him fumbling my hat. 
Said I to myself: "The personage before me 
is more than a snag-boat captain. This is 



I04 The River and I 

none other than the gentleman who invented 
the Missouri River. No doubt even now he 
carries the patent in his pocket ! " 

"Going down river in a power canoe, eh?" 
he growled, regarding me critically. "Well, 
you '11 never get down!" 

"That so?" croaked I, endeavoring to 
swallow my Adam's apple. 

"No, you won't!" 

"Why?" ventured I timidly, almost 
pleadingly; "Isn't there — uh — isn't there — 
uh — water enough?'' 

"Water enough — yes!" growled the per- 
sonage who invented the longest river in the 
world and therefore knew what he was 
talking about. "Plenty of water — hut you 
won't find it!" 

Now as the Atom slid into the stream, I 
thought of the captain's words. Since that 
time the river had fallen three feet. We 
drew eighteen inches. 

Sixty-five days after that oraculous utter- 
ance of the captain, the Kid and I, half 
stripped, sunburned, sweating at the oars, 
were forging slowly against a head wind at 



Half- Way to the Moon 105 

the mouth of the Cheyenne, sixteen hun- 
dred miles below the head of navigation. A 
big white and red steamer was creeping up 
stream over the shallow crossing of the Chey- 
enne 's bar, sounding every foot of the water 
fallen far below the usual summer level. 

It was the snag-boat. Crossing her bows 
and drifting past her slowly, I stood up and 
shouted to the party in the pilot house: 

"I want to speak to the captain." 

He came out on the hurricane deck — the 
man who invented the river. He was still 
stiff and proud, but a swift smile crossed his 
face as he looked down upon us, half-naked 
and sun-blackened there in our dinky little 
craft. 

"Captain," I cried, and perhaps there was 
the least vain-glory in me; "I talked to you 
at Benton." 

"Yes sir." 

"Well, / have found that water!'' 



CHAPTER IV 

MAKING A GETAWAY 

'T'ELL a Teuton that he can't, and very 
Hkely he will show you that he can. 
It 's in the blood. Between the prophecy 
of the snag-boat captain and my vain-glori- 
ous answer at the Cheyenne crossing, I 
learned to respect the words of the man who 
invented the eccentric old river. In the face 
of heavy head winds, I quoted the words, 
^'You '11 never get down" — and they bit deep 
like whip lashes. On many a sand-bar and 
gravel reef, with the channel far away, I 
heard the words, ''Plenty of water, yes, but 
you won't find it!" And always something 
stronger than my muscles cried out within 
me: "The devil I won't, O you inventor of 
rain-water creeks!" Hour by hour, day by 
day, against almost continual head winds 
and with the lowest water in years, that dis- 

io6 



Making a Getaway 107 

couraging prophecy invaded my ego and was 
repulsed. And that is why we have pessi- 
mists in the world. A pessimist is merely 
a counter-irritant. 

I stood on the bank for some time after the 
Atom I slid into the water, admiring her 
truly beautiful lines. Once I was captain 
of a trunk Hd that sailed a frog-pond 
down in Kansas City; and at that time I 
thought I knew the meaning of pride. I did 
not. All three of us were a bit puffed up over 
that boat. Something of that pride that 
goes before a fall awoke in my captain's 
breast as I loved her with my eyes — that 
trim, slim speed-thing, tugging at her forward 
line, graceful and slender and strong and fleet 
as a Diana. 

I said at last: ''I will now get in her, drop 
down to the town landing, and proceed to 
put to shame a few of these local motor- 
tubs that make so much fuss and don't get 
anywhere!" 

I loved her as a man should love all things 
that are swift and strong and honest, keen for 
marks and goals — a big, clean-limbed, thor- 



io8 The River and I 

oughbred horse that will break his heart to 
get under the wire first; a high-power rifle, 
slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its 
wicked little throaty cry, doing its business 
over a flat trajectory a thousand yards away: 
I loved her as a man should love those. 
Little did I dream that she would betray me. 

I took in the line and went aboard. At 
that moment I almost understood the snag- 
boat captain's bearing. To be master of the 
Atom I seemed quite enough; but to be the 
really truly captain of a big red and white 
snag-boat — it must have been overwhelming! 

I dropped out into the current that, fresh 
from its plunge of four hundred feet in sixteen 
miles, ran briskly. Everything was in readi- 
ness. I meant to put a crimp in the vanity of 
that free-information bureau. 

I turned on the switch, opened the needle 
valve, swung the throttle over to the notch 
numbered with a big " 2." I placed the crank 
on the wheel and gave it a vigorous turn. 

"Poof!" said the engine sweetly, and the 
kind word encouraged me immensely. Again 
I cranked. 



Making a Getaway 109 

"Poof! Poof!" 

It seemed that I had somehow misunder- 
stood the former communication, and it was 
therefore repeated with emphasis. Like a 
model father who walks the floor with the 
weeping child, tenderly seeking the offending 
pin, I looked over that engine. "What have 
I neglected?" said I. I intended to be quite 
logical and fair in the matter. 

I once presided over a country newspaper 
that ran its presses with a gasoline engine 
with a most decided artistic temperament. 
That engine used to have a way of communing 
silently with its own soul right in the middle 
of press day. I remembered this with fore- 
bodings. I remembered how firm but kind 
I was obliged to be with that old engine. I 
remembered how it always put its hands in 
its pockets and took an extended vacation 
every time I swore at it. I decided to be 
nothing but a perfect gentleman with this 
engine. I even endeavored to be a jovial 
good fellow. 

"What is it. Little One?" said I mentally; 
"does its Httle carburetor hurt it? Or did 



no The River and I 

the bad man strangle it with that horrid 
old gasoline?" 

I tenderly jiggled its air valve, fiddled 
gently with its spark-control lever. I cranked 
it again. It barked at me like a dog! I 
had been kind to it, and it barked right in 
my face. I wanted to slap it. I lifted my 
eyes and saw that the rapid current would 
soon carry me past the town landing. I 
seized a paddle and shoved her in. Of course, 
a member of the free -information bureau was 
at the landing. He had with him a bland 
smile and a choice bit of information. 

"Having trouble with your engine, aren't 
you?" he said as I leaped ashore with the 
line. "There must be something wrong 
with it!" The remark was indeed illimiinat- 
ing. It struck me with the force of an in- 
spiration. It seemed so true. 

"Strange that I had n't thought of that!" 
I remarked. "That really must be the 
trouble — there 's something wrong with it. 
Thanks!" 

I tied the boat and went up-town, hoping 
to sidetrack the benevolent member of that 



Making a Getaway m 

ubiquitous bureau. When I returned, I 
found half a dozen other benevolent members 
at the landing. They were holding a con- 
sultation, evidently; and the very air felt 
gummy with latent advice. 

"What's the matter with your engine?" 
they chorused. 

"Why, there 's something wrong with it!" 
I explained cheerfully, as I went aboard 
again. I began to crank, praying steadily 
for a miracle. Now and then I managed to 
coax forth a gaseous chortle or two. The 
convention on the landing understood every 
chortle in a truly marvellous way. 

"It's the spark-plug, that's sure!" an- 
nounced one with an air of finality. "When 
an engine has run for a while (!) the spark- 
plug gets all smutted up. Have you cleaned 
your spark-plug? " 

"No Jim!" contradicted another, "it's 
all in the oil feed! Look how she puffs! 
W'y it 's in the oil feed — plain as day! Now 
if you '11 take off that carburetor and " 

I cranked on heroically. 

"It's in the timer," volunteered another. 



112 The River and I 

"You see that Httle brass lever back there? 
Well, you take and remove that and you '11 
find that " 



I cranked on shamelessly. 

"The batteries ain't no good!" growled 
a man with a big voice that reminded me 
of a bass-drum booming up among the wind 
instruments in a medley. Like the barber 
who owned the white owl, I stuck to my 
business. I cranked on. 

"It ain't in them batteries — them batteries 
is all right!" piped a weazened little man who 
had been grinning wisely at the lack of me- 
chanical ability so shamelessly exposed by his 
fellows. "Now in a jump-spark engine," 
he explained leisurely, with a knowing squint 
of his eyes and an uplifted explanatory 
forefinger: "in a jump-spark engine, gentle- 
men, there is a number of things to consider. 
Now if you '11 take and remove that cylinder- 
head, pull out the piston, and " 

The voice of the expounder was suddenly 
drowned out by the earsplitting rapid-fire 
of the exhaust! The miracle had happened! 
Hooray ! 



Making a Getaway 113 

I grasped the steering cords and jammed 
her rudder hard to port. Her fourteen-inch 
screw, suddenly started at full speed ahead, 
made the light, slim craft leap like a spike- 
spurred horse. 

But the turn was too short. She thrust her 
sharp haughty nose into the air like an offended 
lady, and started up the bank after that in- 
formation bureau. If a tree had been con- 
venient, I think she would have climbed it. 

I shut her down. 

''She went that time!''' chorused the infor- 
mation bureau. Coming from an informa- 
tion bureau, the statement was marvellously 
correct. But I had suddenly become too 
glad-hearted for a sharp retort. 

"If you will please throw me the line, and 
push me off," I said confidently, "I '11 drop 
out into the current." 

I dropped out. 

"Now for putting a crimp in some people's 
vanity!" I exulted. 

I cranked. Nothing doing! I cranked 
some more. No news from the crimping 
department. I continued to crank; also, I 



it4 The River and I 

continued to drift. Somehow that current 
seemed to have increased alarmingly in speed. 
I thought I heard a sound of merriment. 
I looked up. The little weazened man was 
gesticulating wildly with that forefinger of 
his. He was explaining something. The 
information bureau, steadily dwindling into 
the distance, was not listening. It seemed to 
be enjoying itself immensely. 

I swallowed a half-spoken word that tasted 
bitter as it went down. Then I cranked 
again. There seemed to be nothing else to 
do. It was a hot day; hot sweat blinded, me, 
and trickled off the tip of my nose. My 
hands began to develop blisters. Finally, a 
deep disgust seized me. I once saw a tender- 
hearted lady on her knees in the dust before 
a balky auto. I remembered her half -sobbed 
words: " You mean thing, you! What is the 
matter with you, anyway! Oh, you mean, 
mean thing!'' 

I sat down in front of that engine and 
abandoned myself to a great feeling of tender- 
ness and chivalry for that unfortunate lady. 
In that moment I believe I would have fought 



Making a Getaway 115 

a bear for her! Oh that all the gasoline 
engines in the world could be concentrated 
somehow into one big woolly, scary black 
bear, how I could have set my teeth in its 
neck and died chewing! 

I heard a roaring of waters that broke my 
vision of bear fights and gentle ladies in dis- 
tress. A hundred yards ahead of me I saw 
rapids. The words of the information bureau 
came back to me with terrible distinctness: 
"Why, her light timbers will go to pieces on 
the first rock!" 

Although I am no hero, I did n't get fright- 
ened. I got sore. ''Go ahead, and smash 
yourself up, if you like!" I cried to the balky 
craft. And then I waited to see her do it. 
She swung 'round sharply with the first suck 
of the rapids, struck a rock, side-stepped, 
struck another, and went on down, grinding 
and dragging on a stony reef. 

It suddenly came to me that this was what 
they called the Grocondunez Rapids. I re- 
membered that they said the name meant 
''the big bridge of the nose. " The name had 
a powerful fascination for me — I wanted 



ii6 The River and I 

to hit something good and hard somewhere 
in that region ! 

Finally she swung clear of the reef, caught 
the swirl of the main current, and started for 
New Orleans with the bit in her teeth. I 
was n't ready to arrive in New Orleans at 
once; I had made other arrangements. So 
I grasped a paddle and drove her into shallow 
water. I leaped out, waist-deep in the cold 
stream, and threw my weight against her. 
Pantingly, I wondered what was the exact 
distance to the nearest axe. I resolved to crank 
her once more and then for the axe hunt ! 

I leaned over the gunwale and began to 
grind. For the life of me, I don't know just 
what I did to her; but it seemed that she had 
taken some offence. Without the least warn- 
ing, she leaped forward at three-quarter speed, 
and started up stream with that haughty head 
of hers thrust skyward! 

I clung desperately to her gunwale, and she 
dragged me insultingly in the drink! She 
made a soppy rag of me! I managed to 
scramble aboard — something after the fashion 
of a bronco-buster who mounts at a gallop. 



Making a Getaway 117 

But the way she travelled! I forgot the 
ducking and forgave her with all my heart. 
I held her nose well out into the channel 
where the current ran with swells, though 
no wind blew. 

Bucking the rapids, she split the fast water 
over her nose and sent it aft in two clean-cut 
masses, that hissed about her like angry 
skirts. A light, V-shaped wake spread after, 
scarcely agitating the surface. She dragged 
no water. There was no churning at her 
stern. Only the dull, subaqueous drone, felt 
rather than heard beneath the rapid banging of 
her exhaust, told me how the honest little 
screw thrust hard. 

I pushed the spark-lever close to the revers- 
ing point, and opened her throttle wide. 
This acted like a bottle-fly on the flank of a 
spirited mare. She shook herself, quivering 
through all her light, pliable construction, 
lifted her prow another inch or two, and flung 
the rapids behind her. 

Slim, fleet, clean-heeled, and hungry for 
distance, she raced toward the Benton landing 
two miles up. 



ii8 The River and I 

In my anxiety to show her to the benevo- 
lent ones, I left the current and took a crosscut 
over a rocky ford. Pebbles flung from her 
pounding heels showered down upon me. I 
climbed forward and let her hammer away. 
She cleared the gravel bar, and as she plunged 
past the now silent information bureau on the 
landing, condescendingly I waved a hand at 
them and went on splitting water. 

We shot under the bridge, forged into the 
crossing current, passed the big brick hotel, 
where a considerable number came out to 
salute us. They dubbed her the fastest 
boat that had ever climbed that current, I 
learned afterward. Alas! I was getting my 
triumph early and in one big chunk! I 
figure that that one huge breakfast of tri- 
umph, if properly distributed, would have fed 
me through the whole two thousand miles 
of back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, 
through all the days of snail-paced toil that 
followed, I remained truly thankful for that 
early breakfast. 

The Kid and the Cornishman, busy in 
camp with the packing for the voyage, had 



Making a Getaway 119 

shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. 
But now, as I plunged past them, I could see 
them leaping into the air and cracking their 
heels together with delight. They had wet 
every plank of her with their sweat, and they 
were as proud as I. Tn the light of the fol- 
lowing days, their delight dwindled into a 
pathetic thing. 

I held her on her course up-stream, reached 
the bend a mile above, swung round and — 
discovered that she had only then begun to 
lift her heels! With the rapid current to 
aid, her speed was truly wonderful. She 
could have kept pace with any respectable 
freight train at least. 

I indulged in a little feverish mental calcu- 
lation. She could make, with the minimum 
current, eighteen miles per hour. Every 
day meant fifteen hours of light. Sioux City 
was two thousand miles away. We could 
reach Sioux City easily in ten days of actual 
running! 

While I was covering that fast mile back 
to camp, I saw the Atom I passing Sioux 
City with an air of high-nosed contempt. 



I20 The River and I 

I developed a sort of unreasoning hunger 
for New Orleans — a kind of violent thirst 
for the Gulf of Mexico! Nothing short of 
these, it seemed to me, could be worthy of so 
fleet a craft. When I shoved her nose into 
the landing, I found that my companions 
thoroughly agreed with me. 

All that night in my restless sleep I drove 
speed boats at a terrific pace through im- 
possible channels and rock-toothed Scyllas; 
and the little Cornishman fought angry seas 
and heard a dream-wind shrieking in the 
cordage, and felt the salt spume on his face. 
"I wonder why I am always dreaming that," 
he said. ''Atavism," I ventured; and he 
regarded me narrowly, as though I might 
be maligning his character in some way. 

At dawn we had already eaten and were 
loading the Atom for the voyage. With her 
cargo she drew eighteen inches of water. At 
full speed, she would squat four inches. It was 
the first of August and the water, which had 
reached in the spring its highest point for 
twenty years, had been falling rapidly, and 
now promised to go far below the average 



Making a Getaway 123 

low- water mark. We had ahead of us a long 
voyage, every mile of which was strange 
water. 

Once again I went over that feverish cal- 
culation. This time I was more generous. 
I decided upon fifteen days. The cable 
ferry towed us out beyond the gravel bars 
that, during the last week, had been slowly 
lifting their bleached masses higher. In 
mid-stream we cut loose. 

At the first turn the engine started. We 
were going at a good half- speed clip, when 
suddenly the engine changed its mind. 
"Squash!" it said wearily. Then it let off a 
gasoline sigh and went into a peaceful sleep. 
We had reached the brick hotel. We pulled 
in with the paddles and tied up. The in- 
formation bureau was there, and at once 
went into consultation. 

'Tm looking for an engine doctor," I said. 
''How about Mr. Blank? They tell me he 
knows the unknowable." 

''Best man with an engine in town," said 
one. 

"For gracious' sake, keep that man away 



124 The River and I 

from your engine if you don't want it ruined! " 
said others. A man who can arouse a diver- 
sity of opinions is at least a man of originality. 
I went after that man. 

He came — with an air of mystery and a 
monkey wrench. He sat down in front of the 
patient (how that word does fit!) and after 
some time he said : ' ' Hm ! ' ' 

He unscrewed this — and whistled awhile; 
he unscrewed that — and whistled some more. 
Then he screwed up both this and that and 
cranked her. 

* ' Phew-oo-oo-oo ! ' ' said the engine. Whereat 
the doctor smiled knowingly. It was plain 
that she was an open book to him. 

''What is the trouble?" said I, with that 
tone of voice you use in a sick-room. 

It appeared to be appendicitis. 

*' Spark-plug," muttered the doctor. 

"Shall I get another?" I asked, half apolo- 
getically. 

"Better," grunted the doctor. 

I chased down an automobile owner, and 
a launch owner and a man who had a small 
pumping-engine. I was eloquent in my 



Making a Getaway 125 

appeal for spark-plugs. I made a very fine 
collection of them^ and hastened back to the 
doctor. He did n't seem to appreciate my 
efforts. He had the patient on the operating- 
table. Everything was either unscrewed or 
pulled out. He was carefully scrutinizing 
the wreck — for more things to screw out ! 

" Locate the trouble? " I ventured. 

"Buzzer 's out of whack," replied the Man 
of Awe; ''Have to get another spark-coil!" 
In times of sickness even the sternest man 
submits to medical tyranny. I ran down a 
man who once owned a power boat, and he 
had a spark-coil. He finally agreed to forego 
the pleasure of possessing it for a suitable 
reward. Considering the size of that reward, 
he had undoubtedly become greatly attached 
to his spark-coil! 

I returned in triumph to the doctor. He 
was now screwing up all that he had previously 
unscrewed. 

"Think she '11 go now?" I pleaded. 

> Dear Reader: Should you undertake the Missouri River 
trip, don't lay anything out on spark-plugs. I sowed them 
all along up there. Take a drag-net. You will scoop up 
several hundred dry batteries, but don't mind them; they are 
probably spoiled. 



126 The River and I 

He screwed up several dozen things, and 
whistled a while. Then the oracle gave voice: 
'"Fraid the batteries won't do; they 're awful 
weak!" 

With a bitter heart, I turned on my heel 
and went forth once more. Electrical supplies 
were not on sale at any of the stores. But I 
found a number of gentlemen who were evi- 
dently connoisseurs in the battery business. 
They had batteries of which they were ex- 
tremely fond. They parted with some of 
superior quality upon the consideration of a 
friendly regard for me — and a slight emolu- 
ment on my part. I was evidently very 
popular. 

At a breathless speed I returned to — not to 
the doctor. He had vanished. Rumor had 
it that he had gone home to lunch, for the sun 
was now high. So far as I know, he is still 
at lunch. 

Several things were yet unscrewed. I fell 
to work. Wherever anything seemed to make 
a snug fit, I screwed it in. Other remaining 
things I drove into convenient holes. All 
the while I begged blind fate to guide me. 



Making a Getaway 129 

Then I connected the batteries, suppHed the 
new spark-coil, selected a new spark-plug at 
random, and screwed it in. 

Having done various things, I carefully 
surveyed my environs for a lady. There 
were no ladies present, so I spoke out freely. 
''And now," said I, having exhausted my 
vocabulary, ''I shall crank!" 

Bill and the Kid sat on a pile of rocks 
looking very sullen. For some reason or 
other they seemed to doubt that engine. 
I don't know how long I cranked. I know 
only that the impossible happened. The 
boat started for the hotel piazza! 

I did n't shut her down this time. I leaped 
out and took her by the nose. Putting our 
shoulders against the power of the screw, 
we walked her out into the current, headed 
her down stream, and scrambled in, wet to the 
ears. 

My logbook speaks for that day as follows: 
"Left Benton at 2:30 p.m. Gypsied along 
under half gasoline for several hours, safely 
crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. 
Struck a rock in Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, 



ISO The River and I 

taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty 
on a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 
5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind from the 
west beat us against a ragged shore for an 
hour and a half. Impossible to proceed 
without power, except by cordelling — which 
we did, walking waist-deep in the water much 
of the time. Paddles useless in such a head 
wind. The wind falling at sunset, we drifted, 
again losing our rudder while shooting Brule 
Rapids. Tied up at the head of Black 
Bluffs Rapids at dusk, having made twenty 
miles out of two thousand for the first day's 
run. Have to extend that fifteen days! 
Just the same, that information bureau saw us 
leave under power!" 



w 



CHAPTER V 

THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR 

'E awoke with light hearts on the second 
morning of the voyage. All about 
us was the sacred silence of the wilderness 
dawn. The coming sun had smitten the chill 
night air into a ghostly fog that lay upon the 
valley like a fairy lake. 

We were at the rim of the Bad Lands and 
there were no birds to sing; but crows, 
wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung 
doleful voices downward into the morning 
hush — the spirit of the place grown vocal. 

Cloaked with the fog, our breakfast fire 
of driftwood glowed ruddily. What is there 
about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome 
place that fills one with glories that seem half 
memory and half dream? Crouched on my 
haunches, shivering just enough to feel the 
beauty there is in fire, I needed only to close 

131 



132 The River and I 

my eyes, smarting with the smoke, to feel 
myself the first man huddled close to the 
first flame, blooming like a mystic flower in 
the chill dawn of the world ! 

Perhaps that is what an outing is for — to 
strip one down to the lean essentials, press in 
upon one the glorious privilege of being 
one's self, unique in all the universe of in- 
numerable unique things. Crouched close to 
your wilderness campfire, the great Vision 
comes easily out of the smoke. Once again 
you feel the bigness of your world, the tre- 
mendous significance of everything in it — 
including yourself — and a far-seeing sadness 
grips you. Living in the flesh seems so 
transient, almost a pitiful thing in the last 
analysis. But somehow you feel that there is 
something bigger — not beyond it, but all 
about it continually. And you wonder that 
you ever hated anyone. You know, some- 
how, there in the smoky silence, why men are 
noble or ignoble; why they lie or die for a 
principle; why they kill, or suffer martyr- 
dom; why they love and hate and fight; 
why women smile under burdens, sin splen- 



Through the Region of Weir 133 

didly or sordidly — and why hearts sometimes 
break. 

And expanded by the bigness of the empty 
silent spaces about you, like a spirit independ- 
ent of it and outside of it all, you love the 
great red straining Heart of Man more than 
you could ever love it at your desk in town. 
And you want to get up and move — push on 
through purple distances — whither? Oh, 
anywhere will do! What you seek is at the 
end of the rainbow; it is in the azure of dis- 
tance; it is just behind the glow of the sunset, 
and close under the dawn. And the glorious 
thing about it is that you know you '11 never 
find it until you reach that lone, ghostly land 
where the North Star sets, perhaps. You 're 
merely glad to know that you 're not a vege- 
table — and that the trail never really ends 
anywhere. 

Just now, however, the longing for the 
abstract had the semblance of a longing for 
the concrete. It always has that semblance, 
for that matter. You never really want what 
you think you are seeking. Touch the sub- 
stance — and away you go after the shadow ! 



134 The River and I 

Around the bend lay Sioux City. Around 
what bend? What matter? Somewhere 
down stream the last bend lay, and in 
between lay the playing of the game. Any 
bend will do to sail around! There's a 
lot of fun in merely being able to move 
about and do things. For this reason I am 
overwhelmed with gratitude whenever I 
think that, through some slight error in the 
cosmic process, the life forces that glow in 
me might have been flung into a turnip — 
hut were n't ! The thought is truly appalling 
— is n't it? The avoidance of that one awful 
possibility is enough to make any man feel 
lucky all his life. It 's such fun to waken in 
the morning with all your legs and arms and 
eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used 
again! So strong was this thought in me 
when we cast off, that even the memory of 
Bill's amateurish pancakes could n't keep 
back the whistle. 

The current of the Black Bluffs Rapids 
whisked us from the bank with a giddy speed, 
spun us about a right-angled bend, and landed 
us in a long quiet lake. Contrary to the 



Through the Region of Weir 135 

average opinion, the Upper Missouri is merely 
a succession of lakes and rapids. In the low- 
water season, this statement should be itali- 
cised. When you are pushing down with the 
power of your arms alone the rapids show 
you how fast you want to go, and the lakes 
show you that you can't go that fast. For 
the teaching of patience, the arrangement is 
admirable. But when head winds blow, a 
three-mile reach means about a two-hour 
fight. 

This being a very invigorating morning, 
however, the engine decided to take a con- 
stitutional. It ran. Below the mouth of the 
Marias River, twenty minutes later, we 
grounded on Archer's Bar and shut down. 
After dragging her off the gravel, we dis- 
covered that the engine wished to sleep. 
No amount of cranking could arouse it. Now 
and then it would say ''squash,'' feebly rolling 
its wheel a revolution or two — like a sleepy- 
head brushing off a fly with a languid hand. 

A light breeze had sprung up out of the west. 
The stream ran east and northeast. We 
hastily rigged a tarp on a pair of oars spliced 



136 The River and I 

for a mast, and proceeded at a care-free pace. 
The Hght breeze scarcely ruffled the surface 
of the slow stream; 

" yet still the sail made on 



A pleasant noise till noon." 

In the lazy heat of the mounting sun, 
tempered by the cool river draught, the yel- 
low sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated 
with sparse patches of greenery, seemed to 
waver as though seen through shimmering 
silken gauze. And over it all was the hush 
of a dream, except when, in a spasmodic fresh- 
ening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked 
and a sleepy watery murmur grew up for a 
moment at the wake. 

Now and then at a break in the bluffs, 
where a little coulee entered the stream, the 
gray masses of the bull-berry bushes lifted 
like smoke, and from them, flame-like, flashed 
the vivid scarlet of the berry-clusters, smiting 
the general dreaminess like a haughty cry 
in a silence. 

A wilderness indeed ! It seemed that waste 
land of which Tennyson sang, "where no man 



Through the Region of Weir 137 

comes nor hath come since the making of the 
world." I thought of the steamboats and 
the mackinaws and the keel-boats and the 
thousands of men who had pushed through 
this dream-world and the thought was uncon- 
vincing. Fairies may have lived here, indeed; 
and in the youth of the world, a glad young 
race of gods might have dreamed gloriously 
among the yellow crags. But surely we were 
the first men who had ever passed that way — 
and should be the last. 

Suddenly the light breeze boomed up into a 
gale. The Atom, with bellying sail, leaped 
forward down the roughening water, swung 
about a bend, raced with a quartering wind 
down the next reach, shot across another 
bend — and lay drifting in a golden calm. 
Still above us the great wind buzzed in the 
crags like a swarm of giant bees, and the waters 
about us lay like a sheet of flawless glass. 

With paddles we pushed on lazily for an 
hour. At the next bend, where the river 
turned into the west, the great gale that had 
been roaring above us, suddenly struck us 
full in front. Sucking up river between the 



138 The River and I 

wall rocks on either side, its force was terrific. 
You tried to talk while facing it, and it took 
your breath away. In a few minutes, in 
spite of our efforts with the paddles, we lay 
pounding on the shallows of the opposite 
shore. 

We got out. Two went forward with the 
line and the third pushed at the stern. Pro- 
gress was slow — no more than a mile an hour. 
The clear water of the upper river is always 
cold, and the great wind chilled the air. 
Even under the August noon it took brisk 
work to keep one's teeth from chattering. 
The bank we were following became a preci- 
pice rising sheer from the river's edge, and 
the water deepened until we could no longer 
wade. We got in and poled on to the next 
shallows, often for many minutes at a time 
barely holding our own against the stiff 
gusts. For two hours we dragged the heavily 
laden boat, sometimes walking the bank, 
sometimes wading in mid-stream, sometimes 
poling, often swimming with the line from 
one shallow to another. And the struggle 
ended as suddenly as it began. Upon round- 



Through the Region of Weir 139 

ing the second bend the head wind beeame a 
stern wind, driving us on at a jolly clip until 
nightfall. 

During the late afternoon, we came upon 
a place where the Great Northern Railroad 
touches the river for the last time in five 
hundred miles. Here we saw two Italian 
section hands whiling away their Sunday with 
fishing rods. I went ashore, hoping to buy 
some fish. Neither of the two could speak 
English, and Italian sounds to me merely 
like an unintelligible singing. However, they 
gave me to understand that the fish were not 
for sale, and my proffered coin had no persua- 
sive powers. 

Still wanting those fish, I rolled a smoke, 
carelessly whistling the while a strain from 
an opera I had once heard. For some reason 
or other that strain had been in my head all 
day. I had gotten up in the morning with it ; 
I had whistled it during the fight with the 
head wind. The Kid called it "that Dago 
tune." I think it was something from // 
Trovatore. 

Suddenly one of the little Italians dropped 



I40 The River and I 

his rod, stood up to his full height, lifted his 
arms very much after the manner of an or- 
chestra leader and joined in with me. I 
stopped — because I saw that he could whistle. 
He carried it on with much expression to the 
last thin note with all the ache of the world in 
it. And then he grinned at me. 

"Verdi!" he said sweetly. 

I applauded. Whereat the little Italian 
produced a bag of tobacco. We sat down on 
the rocks and smoked together, holding a 
wordless but perfectly intelligible conver- 
sation of pleasant grins. 

That night we had fish for supper! I got 
them for a song — or, rather, for a whistle. I 
was fed with more than fish. And I went to 
sleep that night with a glorious thought for a 
pillow: Truth expressed as Art is the univer- 
sal language. One immortal strain from 
Verdi, poorly whistled in a wilderness, had 
made a Dago and a Dutchman brothers! 

Scarcely had the crackling of the ruddy log 
lulled us to sleep, when the night had flitted 
over like a shadow, and we were cooking 
breakfast. A lone, gray wolf, sitting on his 



Through the Region of Weir 141 

haunches a hundred paces away, regarded 
us curiously. Doubtless we were new to his 
generation; for in the evening dusk we had 
drifted well into the Bad Lands. 

Bad Lands? Rather the Land of Awe! 

A light stern wind came up with the sun. 
During the previous evening we had rigged a 
cat-sail, and noiselessly we glided down the 
glinting trail of crystal into the "Region of 
Weir." 

On either hand the sandstone cliffs reared 
their yellow masses against the cloudless sky. 
Worn by the ebbing floods of a prehistoric 
sea, carved by the winds and rains of ages, 
they presented a panorama of wonders. 

Rows of huge colonial mansions with 
pillared porticoes looked from their dizzy 
terraces across the stream to where soaring 
mosques and mystic domes of worship caught 
the sun. It was all like the visible dream of 
a master architect gone mad. Gaunt, sinister 
ruins of mediaeval castles sprawled down the 
slopes of unassailable summits. Grim brown 
towers, haughtily crenellated, scowled defiance 
on the unappearing foe. Titanic stools of 



142 The River and I 

stone dotted barren garden slopes, where 
surely gods had once strolled in that far time 
when the stars sang and the moon was young. 
Dark red walls of regularly laid stone — huge 
as that the Chinese flung before the advance of 
the Northern hordes — held imaginary empires 
asunder. Poised on a dizzy peak, Jove's 
eagle stared into the eye of the sun, and raised 
his wings for the flight deferred these many 
centuries. Kneeling face to face upon a 
lonesome stmimit, their hands clasped before 
them, their backs bent as with the burdens 
of the race, two women prayed the old, old, 
woman prayer. The snow-white ruins of a 
vast cathedral lay along the water's edge, and 
all about it was a hush of worship. And 
near it, arose the pointed pipes of a colossal 
organ — with the simimer silence for music. 

With a lazy sail we drifted through this 
place of awe; and for once I had no regrets 
about that engine. The popping of the ex- 
haust would have seemed sacrilegious in this 
holy quiet. 

Seldom do men pass that way. It is out 
of the path of the tourist. No excursion 



Through the Region of Weir 143 

steamers ply those awesome river reaches. 
Across the sacred whiteness of that cathedral's 
imposing mass, no sign has ever been painted 
telling you the merits of the best five-cent 
cigar in the world! Few beside the hawks 
and the crows would see it, if it were there. 

And yet, for all the quiet in this land of 
wonder, somehow you cannot feel that the 
place is unpeopled. Surely, you think, in- 
visible knights clash in tourney under those 
frowning towers. Surely a lovelorn maiden 
spins at that castle window, weaving her 
heartache into the magic figures of her loom. 
Stately dames must move behind the shut 
doors of those pillared mansions; devotees 
mutter Oriental prayers beneath those sun- 
smitten domes. And amid the awful inner 
silence of that cathedral, white-robed priests 
lift wan faces to their God. 

Under the beat of the high sun the light 
stern wind fell. The slack sail drooped like 
a sick-hearted thing. Idly drifting on the 
slow glassy flood, we seemed only an inci- 
dental portion of this dream in which the 
deepest passions of man were bodied forth in 



144 The River and I 

eternal fixity. Towers of battle, domes 
of prayer, fanes of worship, and then — the 
kneeling women! Somehow one could n't 
whistle there. Bill and the Kid, little given 
to sentiment, sat quietly and stared. 

Late in the afternoon we found ourselves 
out of this "Region of Weir." Great wall 
rocks soared above us. Consulting our map, 
we found that we were nearing Eagle Rapids, 
the first of a turbulent series. I had fondly 
anticipated shooting them all under power. 
So once more I decided to go over that engine. 
We landed at the wooded mouth of a little 
ravine, having made a trifle over twenty 
miles that day. 

With those tools of the engine doctor — 
an air of mystery and a monkey-wrench — I 
unscrewed everything that appeared to have a 
thread on it, and pulled out the other things. 
The odds, I figured, were in my favor. A 
sick engine is useless, and I felt assured of 
either killing or curing. I did something — 
I don't know what; but having achieved the 
complete screwing up and driving in of things 
— it went I 



Through the Region of Weir 145 

So on the morning of the fourth day, we 
were up early, eager for the shooting of rapids. 
We had understood from the conversation of 
the seemingly wise, that Eagle Rapids was 
the first of a series that made the other rapids 
we had passed through look like mere ripples 
on the surface. In some of those we had gone 
at a very good clip, and several times we had 
lost our rudder. 

I remembered how the steamboats used to 
be obliged to throw out cables and slowly 
wind themselves up with the power of the 
^* steam nigger." I also remembered the 
words of Father de Smet: "There are many 
rapids, ten of which are very difficult to ascend 
and very dangerous to go down." 

We had intended from the very first to get 
wrecked in one or all of these rapids. For 
this reason we had distributed forward, aft, 
and amidships, eight five-gallon cans, soldered 
air-tight. The frail craft would, we figured, be 
punctured. The cans would displace nearly 
three hundred and fifty pounds of water, and 
the boat and engine, submerged, would lose 
a certain weight. I had made the gruesome 



146 The River and I 

calculation with fond attention to detail. 
I decided that she should be wrecked quite 
arithmetically. We should be able, the 
figures said, to recover the engine and patch 
the boat. We had provided three life-pre- 
servers, but one had been stolen; so I had 
fancied what a bully fight one might have if 
he should be thrown out into the mad waters 
without a life-preserver. 

I have never been able to explain it satis- 
factorily; it is one of the paradoxes; but 
human nature seems to take a weird delight 
in placing in jeopardy that which is dearest. 
Even a coward with his fingers clenched 
desperately on the ragged edge of hazard, 
feels an inexplicable thrill of glory. Having 
several times been decently scared, I know. 

One likes to take a sly peep behind the 
curtain of the big play, hoping perhaps to get 
a slight hint as to what machinery hoists the 
moon, and what sort of contrivance flings 
the thunder and lightning, and many other 
things that are none of his business. Only, 
to be sure, he intends to get away safely with 
his information. When you think you see 



Throui^h the Re<^ion of Weir 147 



^t5 ^ ""^t> 



your finish bowing to receive you, something 
happens in your head. It 's Hke a suhry 
sheet of rapid fire lapping up for a moment 
the thunder-shaken night — and discovering a 
strange land to you. And it 's really good 
for you. 

Under half speed we cruised through the 
windless golden morning; and the lonesome 
canyon echoed and re-echoed with the joyful 
chortle of the resurrected engine. We had 
covered about ten miles, when a strange 
sighing sound grew up about us. It seemed 
to emanate from the soaring walls of rock. 
It seemed faint, yet it arose above the din 
of the explosions, drowned out the droning 
of the screw. 

Steadily the sound increased. Like the 
ghost of a great wind it moaned and sighed 
about us. Little by little a new note crept in 
— a sibilant, metallic note as of a tense sheet 
of silk drawn rapidly over a thin steel edge. 

We knew it to be the mourning voice of the 
Eagle Rapids; but far as we could see, the 
river was quiet as a lake. We jogged on for 
a mile, with the invisible moaning presence 



148 The River and I 

about us. It was somewhat like that intangi- 
ble something you feel about a powerful but 
sinister personality. The golden morning was 
saturated with it. 

Suddenly, turning a sharp bend about the 
wall of rock that flanked the channel, a 
wind of noise struck us. It was like the hiss- 
ing of innumerable snakes against a tonal 
background of muffled continuous thunder. 
A hundred yards before us was Eagle Rapids 
— a forbidding patch of writhing, whitening 
water, pricked with the upward thrust of 
toothlike rocks. 

The first sight of it turned the inside of 
me mist-gray. Temporarily, wrecks and the 
arithmetic of them had little charm for me. 
I seized the spark-lever, intending to shut 
down. Instead, I threw it wide open. With 
the resulting leap of the craft, all the gray 
went out of me. 

I grasped the rudder ropes and aimed at 
a point where the sinuous current sucked 
through a passage in the rocks like a lean 
flame through a windy flue. Did you ever 
hear music that made you see purple? It 




TYPICAL RAPIDS ON UPPER MISSOURI 



149 



Through the Region of Weir 151 

was that sort of purple I saw (or did I hear it 
like music?) when we plunged under full speed 
into the first suck of the rapids. We seemed 
a conscious arrow hurled through a gray, 
writhing world, the light of which was noise. 
And then, suddenly, the quiet, golden morning 
flashed back; and we were ripping the placid 
waters of a lake. 

The Kid broke out into boisterous laughter 
that irritated me strangely : ' ' Where the devil 
do you suppose our life-preservers are?" he 
bawled. "They 're clear down under all the 
cargo!" 

A world of wonderful beauty was forging 
past us. In the golden calm, the scintillant 
sheet of water seemed to be rushing back- 
ward, splitting itself over the prow, like a 
fabric woven of gold and silver drawn rapidly 
against a keen stationary blade. 

The sheer cliffs had fallen away into pine- 
clad slopes, and vari-colored rocks flung notes 
of scarlet and gold through the sombre 
green of the pines — like the riotous treble 
cries of an organ pricking the sullen mur- 
mur of the bass. So still were the clean 



152 The River and I 

waters that we seemed midway between two 
skies. 

I We skirted the base of a conical rock that 
towered three hundred feet above us — a Titan 
sentinel. It was the famous Sentinel Rock 
of the old steamboat days. I shut the 
engine down to quarter speed, for somehow 
from the dizzy summit a sad dream fell upon 
me and bade me linger. 

I stared down into the cold crystal waters 
at the base of the rock. Many-colored mosses, 
sickly green, pale, feverish red, yellow like 
fear, black like despair, purple like the lips of a 
strangled man, clung there. I remembered 
an old spring I used to haunt v/hen I was 
just old enough to be awed by the fact of Hfe 
and frightened at the possibility of death. 
Just such mosses grew in the depths of that 
spring. I used to stare into it for hours. 

It fascinated me in a terrible way. I 
thought Death looked like that. Even now 
I am afraid I could not swim long in clear 
waters with those fearful colors under me. 
I am sure they found Ophelia floating like 
a ghastly lily in such a place. 



Through the Region of Weir 153 

Filled with a shadow of the old childish 
dread, I looked up to the austere summit of 
the Sentinel. Scarred and haggard with time 
it caught the sun. I thought of how long it 
had stood there just so, under the intermittent 
flashing of moon and sun and star, since first 
its flinty peak had pricked through the hot 
spume of prehistoric seas. 

Fantastic reptiles, winged and finned and 
fanged, had basked upon it — grotesque, ten- 
tative vehicles of the Flame of Life! And 
then these flashed out, and the wild sea fell, 
and the land arose — hideous and naked, a 
steaming ooze fetid with gasping life. And 
all the while this scarred Sentinel stared 
unmoved. And then a riot of giant vegeta- 
tion all about it — divinely extravagant, many- 
colored as fire. And this too flashed out — 
like the impossible dream of a god too young. 
And the Great Change came, and the para- 
dox of frost was in the world, stripping life 
down to the lean essentials till only the sane, 
capable things might live. And still the 
Titan stared as in the beginning. And then, 
men were in the land — gaunt, terrible, wolf- 



154 The River and I 

like men, loving and hating. And La 
Verendrye forged past it; and Lewis and 
Clark toiled under it through these waters 
of awful quiet. And then the bull boats and 
the mackinaws and the packets. And all 
these flashed out; and still it stood unmoved. 
And I came — and I too would flash out, and 
all men after me and all life. 

I viewed the colossal watcher with some- 
thing like terror — the aspect of death about 
its base and that cynical glimmer of sunlight 
at its top. I flung the throttle open, and we 
leaped forward through the river hush. I 
wanted to get away from this thing that had 
seen so much of life and cared so little. It 
depressed me strangely; it thrust a bitter 
question within the charmed circle of my 
ego. It gave me an almost morbid desire 
for speed, as though there were some place 
I should reach before the terrible, question 
should be answered against me. 

We fled down five or six miles of depres- 
singly quiet waters. Once again the wall 
rocks closed about us. We seemed to be going 
at a tediously slow pace, yet the two thin 



Through the Region of Weir 157 

streams of water rushed hissing from prow 
to stern. A strange mood was upon me. 
Once when I was a boy and far from home, I 
awoke in the night with a bed of railroad 
ties under me, and the chill black blanket 
of the darkness about me. I wanted to get 
up and run through that damned night — 
anywhere, just so I went fast enough — stop- 
ping only when exhaustion should drag me 
down. And yet I was afraid of nothing 
tangible; hunger and the stranger had sharp- 
ened whatever blue steel there was in my 
nature. I was afraid of being still! Were 
you ever a homesick boy, too proud to tell 
the truth about it? 

I felt something of that boy's ache as we 
shot in among the wall rocks again. It was 
a psychic hunger for something that does 
not exist. Oh, to attain the terrible speed one 
experiences in a fever-dream, to get some- 
where before it is too late, before the black 
curtain drops ! 

To some this may sound merely like the 
grating of overwrought nerves. But it is more 
than that. All religions grew out of that 



158 The River and I 

most hiiman mood. And whenever one is 
deeply moved, he feels it. For even the 
most matter-of-fact person of us all has now 
and then a suspicion that this life is merely- 
episodic — that curtain after curtain of dark- 
ness is to be pierced, world after world of 
consciousness and light to be passed through. 

Once more the rocks took on grotesque 
shapes — utterly ultra-human in their sug- 
gestiveness. Those who have marvelled at 
the Hudson's beauty should drop down this 
lonesome stretch. , 

We shot through the Elbow Rapids at the 
base of the great Hole-in-the-Wall Rock. It 
was deep and safe — much like an exaggerated 
mill-race. It ran in heavy swells, yet the day 
was windless. 

In the late afternoon we shot the Dead 
Man's Rapids, a very turbulent and rocky 
stretch of water. We went through at a 
freight-train speed, and began to develop 
a slight contempt for fast waters. That 
night we camped at the mouth of the Judith 
River on the site of the now forgotten Fort 
Chardon. We had made only ninety-eight 



Through the Region of Weir i6i 

miles in four days. It began to appear that 
we might be obliged to finish on skates ! 

We were up and off with the first gray of 
the morning. We knew Dauphin Rapids to 
be about seventeen miles below, and since 
this particular patch of water had by far the 
greatest reputation of all the rapids, we were 
eager to make its acquaintance. 

The engine began to show unmistakable 
signs of getting tired of its job. Now and 
then it barked spitefully, had half a notion 
to stop, changed its mind, ran faster than it 
should, wheezed and slowed down — acting in 
an altogether unreasonable way. But it 
kept the screw humming nevertheless. 

Fortunately it was going at a mad clip 
when we sighted the Dauphin. There was 
not that sibilance and thunder that had 
turned me a bit gray inside at first sight of the 
Eagle. The channel was narrow, and no rocks 
appeared above the surface. But speed was 
there; and the almost noiseless rolling of the 
swift flood ahead had a more formidable ap- 
pearance than that of the Eagle. Rocks above 
the surface are not much to be feared when 



1 62 The River and I 

you have power and a good rudder. But 
we drew about twenty-two inches of water, 
and I thought of the rocks under the surface. 

I had, however, only a moment to think, 
for we were already travelling a good eighteen 
miles, and when the main swirl of the rapids 
seized us, we no doubt reached twenty-five. 
I was grasping the rudder ropes and we were 
all grinning a sort of idiotic satisfaction at the 

amazing spurt of speed, when 

; Something was about to happen! 

The Kid and I were sitting behind the en- 
gine in order to hold her screw down to solid 
water. Bill, decorated with a grin, sat amid- 
ships facing us. I caught a pink flash in 
the swirl just under our bow, and then it 
happened I 

The boat reared like a steeple-chaser 
taking a fence! The Kid shot forward over 
the engine and knocked the grin off Bill's 
face! Clinging desperately to the rudder 
ropes, I saw, for a brief moment, a good 
three fourths of the frail craft thrust skyward 
at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Then 
she stuck her nose in the water and her screw 



Through the Region of Weir 163 

came up, howling like seven devils in the air 
behind me! Instinctively, I struck the spark- 
lever; the howling stopped, — and we were 
floating in the slow waters below Dauphin 
Rapids. 

All the cargo had forged forward, and the 
persons of Bill and the Kid were considerably 
tangled. We laughed loud and long. Then 
we gathered ourselves up and wondered if 
she might be taking water under the cargo. 
It developed that she was n't. But one of 
our grub boxes, containing all the bacon, was 
missing. So were the short oars that we 
used for paddles. While we laughed, these 
had found some convenient hiding-place. 

We had struck a smooth boulder and leaped 
over it. A boat with the ordinary launch 
construction would have opened at every 
seam. The light springy tough construction 
of the Atom had saved her. Whereat I thought 
of the Information Bureau and was well 
pleased. 

Altogether we looked upon the incident as 
a purple spot. But we were many miles from 
available bacon, and when, upon trial, the 



i64 The River and I 

engine refused to make a revolution, we began 
to get exceedingly hungry for meat. 

Having a dead engine and no paddles, we 
drifted. We drifted very slowly. The Kid 
asked if he might not go ashore and drive a 
stake in the bank. For what purpose? Why, to 
ascertain whether we were going up or down 
stream ! While we drifted in the now blister- 
ing sun, we talked about meat. With a 
devilish persistence we quite exhausted the 
subject. We discussed the best methods 
for making a beefsteak delicious. It made us 
very hungry for meat. The Kid announced 
that he could feel his backbone sawing at the 
front of his shirt. But perhaps that was 
only the hyperbole of youth. Bill confessed 
that he had once grumbled at his good wife 
for serving the steak too rare. He now stated 
that at the first telegraph station he would 
wire for forgiveness. I advised him to wire 
for money instead' and buy meat with it. 
Personally I felt a sort of wistful tenderness 
for packing-houses. 

That day passed somehow, and the next 
morning we were still hungry for meat. We 



Through the Region of Weir 165 

spent most of the morning talking about it. 
In the blistering windless afternoon, we 
drifted lazily. Now and then we took turns 
cranking the engine. 

We were going stern foremost and I was 
cranking. We rounded a bend where the 
wall rocks sloped back, leaving a narrow 
arid sagebrush strip along both sides of the 
stream. I had straightened up to get the 
kink out of my back and mop the sweat out 
of my eyes, when I saw something that made 
my stomach turn a double somersault. 

A good eight hundred yards down stream 
at the point of a gravel-bar, something that 
looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of 
drifting, leafless brush moved slowly into the 
water. Now it appeared quite distinct, and 
now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted 
it out. I blinked my eyes and peered hard 
through the baffling yellow glare. Then I 
reached for the rifle and climbed over the 
gunwale. I smelled raw meat. 

Fortunately, we were drifting across a bar, 
and the slow water came only to my shoulders. 
The thing eight hundred yards away was 



1 66 The River and I 

forging across stream by this time — heading 
for the mouth of a coulee. I saw plainly 
now that the brush grew out of a head. It 
was a buck with antlers. 

Just below the coulee's mouth, the wall 
rocks began again. The buck would be 
obliged to land above the wall rocks, and the 
drifting boat would keep him going. I 
reached shore and headed for that coulee. 
The sagebrush concealed me. At the critical 
moment, I intended to show myself and start 
him up the steep slope. Thus he would be 
forced to approach me while fleeing me. 
When I felt that enough time had passed, I 
stood up. The buck, shaking himself like 
a dog, stood against the yellow sandstone 
at the mouth of the gulch. He saw me, 
looked back at the drifting boat, and appeared 
to be undecided. 

I wondered what the range might be. 
Back home in the ploughed field where I fre- 
quently plug tin cans at various long ranges, 
I would have called it six hundred yards — at 
first. Then suddenly it seemed three or 
four hundred. Like a thing in a dream the 




M - 






I 



Through the Region of Weir 169 

buck seemed to waver back and forth in the 
oily sunHght. 

"Call it four hundred and fifty," I said to 
myself, and let drive. A spurt of yellow 
stone-dust leaped from the cliff a foot or so 
above the deer's back. Only four hundred? 
But the deer had made up his mind. He 
had urgent business on the other side of that 
slope — he appeared to be overdue. 

I pumped up another shell and drew fine at 
four hundred. That time his rump quivered 
for a second as though a great weight had 
been dropped on it. But he went on with 
increased speed. Once more I let him have 
it. That time he lost an antler. He had 
now reached the summit, two hundred feet 
up at the least. 

I He hesitated — seemed to be shivering. I 
have hunted with a full stomach and brought 
down game. But there 's a difference when 
you are empty. In that moment before you 
kill, you became the sort of fellow your 
mother would n't like. Perhaps the average 
man would feel a little ashamed to tell the 
truth about that big savage moment. I 



170 The River and I 

got down on my knee and put a final soft- 
nosed ball where it would do the most good. 
The buck reared, stiffened, and came down, 
tumbling over and over. 

That night we pitched camp under a lone 
scrubby tree at the mouth of an arid gulch 
that led back into the utterly God-forsaken 
Bad Lands. It was the wilderness indeed. 
Coyotes howled far away in the night, and 
diving beaver boomed out in the black 
stream. 

We built half a dozen fires and swung above 
them the choice portions of our kill. And 
how we ate — with what glorious appetites! 

It is good to sit with a glad-hearted com- 
pany flinging words of joyful banter across 
very tall steins. It is good to draw up to a 
country table at Christmas time with turkey 
and pumpkin-pies and old-fashioned puddings 
before you, and the ones you love about you. 
I have been deeply happy with apples and 
cider before an open fireplace. I have been 
present when the brilliant sword-play of wit 
flashed across a banquet table — and it thrilled 
me. But 



Through the Region of Weir 171 

There is no feast like the feast in the open — 
the feast in the flaring Hght of a night fire — 
the feast of your own kill, with the tang of the 
wild and the tang of the smoke in it ! 



CHAPTER VI 

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS 

IT all came back there by the smouldering 
*• fires — the wonder and the beauty and the 
awe of being alive. We had eaten hugely 
— a giant feast. There had been no formali- 
ties about that meal. Lying on our blankets 
under the smoke-drift, we had cut with our 
jack-knives the tender morsels from a haunch 
as it roasted. When the haunch was at last 
cooked to the bone, only the bone was left. 

Heavy with the feast, I lay on my back 
watching the gray smoke brush my stars that 
seemed so near. My stars I Soft and gentle 
and mystical! Like a dark-browed Yotun 
woman wooing the latent giant in me, the 
night pressed down. I closed my eyes, and 
through me ran the sensuous surface fires 
of her dream- wrought limbs. Upon my face 

the weird magnetic lure of ever-nearing, never- 

172 



Getting Down to Business 173 

kissing lips made soundless music. Like a 
sister, like a mother she caressed me, lazy 
with the giant feast; and yet, a drowsy, 
half -voluptuous joy shimmered and rippled 
in my veins. 

Drowsing and dreaming under the drifting 
smoke- wrack, I felt the sense of time and self 
drop away from me. No now, no to-mor- 
row, no yesterday, no I! Only eternity, one 
vast whole — sun-shot, star-sprent, love-filled, 
changeless. And in it all, one spot of con- 
sciousness more acute than other spots; and 
that was the something that had eaten hugely, 
and that now felt the inward-flung glory of it 
all; the swooning, half- voluptuous sense of 
awe and wonder, the rippling, shimmering, 
universal joy. 

And then suddenly and without shock — like 
the shifting of the wood smoke — the mood 
veered, and there was nothing but I. Space 
and eternity were I — vast projections of 
myself, tingling with my consciousness to 
the remotest fringe of the outward swing- 
ing atom-drift; through immeasurable night, 
pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic 



174 The River and I 

day; through and beyond the awful circle 
of yearless duration, my ego lived and knew 
itself and thrilled with the glory of being. 
The slowly revolving Milky Way was only 
a glory within me; the great woman-star 
jewelling the summit of a cliff, was only an 
ecstasy within me; the murmuring of the 
river out in the dark was only the singing of 
my heart; and the deep, deep blue of the 
heavens was only the splendid color of my 
soul. 

Bill snored. Among the glowing fires 
moved the black bulk of the Kid, turning 
the hunks of venison. And then the universe 
and I, curiously mixed, swooned into nothing 
at all, and I was blinking at a golden glow, 
and from the river came a shouting. 

It was broad day. We leaped up, and rub- 
bing the sleep from our eyes, saw a light skiff 
drifting toward us. It contained two men — 
Frank and Charley. We had met them at 
Benton, and during an acquaintance of three 
weeks we had learned of their remarkable 
ability as cooks. Frank was a little Canadian 
Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, 



Getting Down to Business 175 

in the parlance of the road, were ''floaters"; 
that is to say, no locahty ever knew them 
long; the earth was their floor, the sky their 
ceiling — and their god was Whim. Naturally 
our trip had appealed to them, and one month 
in Benton had aggravated that hopelessly 
incurable disease — Wanderlust. 

So we had agreed that somewhere down 
river we would camp for a week and wait for 
them. They would do the cooking, and we 
would take them in tow. Two days after we 
dropped out of Benton, they had abruptly 
"jumped" an unfinished job and put off after 
us in a skiff, rowing all day and most of the 
night in order to overtake us. 

Certainly they had arrived at the moment 
most psychologically favorable for the begin- 
ning of an odd sort of tyranny that followed. 
Cooking is a weird mystery to me. As for 
Bill and the Kid, courtesy forbids detailed 
comment. The Kid had been uniformly suc- 
cessful in disguising the most familiar articles 
of diet; and Bill was perhaps least unsuccess- 
ful in the making of flapjacks. According to 
his naive statement, he had discovered the 



176 The River and I 

trick of mixing the batter while manufac- 
turing photographer's mounting paste. His 
statement was never questioned. My only 
criticism on his flapjacks was simply that 
he left too much to the imagination. For 
these and kindred reasons, we gladly hailed 
the newcomers. 

Ten minutes after the skiff touched shore, 
the camp consisted of two cooks and three 
scullions. The Kid was a hewer and packer 
of wood, I was a pealer and sheer of things, 
and Bill, sweetly oblivious of his bewhiskered 
dignity, danced about in the humblest of 
moods, handing this and that to the grub- 
lords. 

' ' You outfitted like greenhorns ! ' ' announced 
the usurpers. "What you want is raw 
material. Run down to the boat, please, and 
bring me this! Oh, yes, and bring me that! 
And you '11 find the other in the bottom of the 
skiff's forward locker! Put a little more wood 
on the fire, Kid; and say. Bill, hand me that, 
won't you? Who 's going to get a pail of 
water?" 

All three of us were going to get a pail of 



Getting Down to Business 179 

water, of course! It was the one thing in the 
world we wanted to do very much — get a pail 
of water ! 

But the raw materials — how they played 
on them! I regarded their performance as a 
species of duet ; and the raw materials, ranged 
in the sand about the fire, were the keys. 
Frank touched this, Charley touched that, 
and over the fire the music grew — perfectly 
stomach-ravishing ! 

We had bought with much care all, or nearly 
all the ordinary cooking-utensils. These the 
usurpers scorned. Three or four gasoline 
cans, transformed by a jack-knife into skillets, 
ovens, platters, etc., sufficed for these masters 
of their craft. The downright Greek simpli- 
city of their methods won me completely. 

"This is indeed Art," thought I; "first, 
the elimination of the non-essential, and then 
the virile, unerring directness, the seemingly 
easy accomplishment resulting from effort 
long forgotten; and, above all, the final, con- 
vincing delivery of the goods." 

Out of the chaos of the raw material, 
beneath the touch of Charley's wise hands, 



i8o The River and I 

emerged a wondrous cosmos of biseuits, light 
as the heart of a boy. And Frank, singing 
a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His 
method struck me as poetic. He scorned the 
ordinary uninspired cook's manner of turning 
the half-baked cake. One side being done, he 
waited until the ditty reached a certain lilting 
upward leap in the refrain, when, with a dex- 
terous movement of the frying-pan, he tossed 
the cake into the air, making it execute a joy- 
ful somersault, and catching it with a sizzling 
splat in the pan, just as the lilting measure 
ceased abruptly. 

Why, I could taste that song in the pan- 
cakes ! 

I wonder why domestic economy has so per- 
sistently overlooked the value of song as an 
adjunct to cookery. Gateaux a la chanson- 
nette! Who would n't eat them for breakfast? 

At six in the evening we put off, Charley, 
the Kid, and I manning the power boat. Bill 
and Frank the skiff, which was towed by a 
thirty-foot line. I had, during the day, trans- 
formed my unquestioned slavery into a dis- 
tinct advantage, having carefully impressed 



Getting Down to Business i8i 

upon the Englishman the honor I would do 
him by allowing him to become chief engineer 
of the Atom. I carefully avoided the subject 
of cranking. I was tired cranking. I felt 
that I had exhausted the possibilities of enjoy- 
ment in that particular form of physical 
exercise. It had developed during the day 
that Charley had once run a gasoline engine. 
I was careful to emphasize my ridiculous lack 
of mechanical ability. Charley took the 
bait beautifully. 

But just now the engine ran merrily. 
Above its barking I sang the praises of the 
Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, 
at least in this, the tail would wag the 
dog. 

Through the clear quiet waters, between 
soaring canyon walls, we raced eastward into 
the creeping twilight. Here and there the 
banks widened out into valleys of wondrous 
beauty, flanked by jagged miniature moun- 
tains transfigured in the slant evening light. 
It seemed the "faerie land forlorn" of which 
Keats dreamed, where year after year come 
only the winds and the rains and the snow 



1 82 The River and I 

and the sunhght and the star-sheen and the 
moon-glow. 

In the deepening evening our widening 
V-shaped wake glowed with opalescent witch- 
fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered 
wild and lost the channel. We all got out 
and, wading in different directions, went 
hunting for the Missouri River. It had flat- 
tened out into a lake three or four hundred 
yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping 
poles under the power boat, we carried it 
several hundred yards to a point where the 
stream deepened. It was now quite dark, and 
the engine quit work for the day. The skiff 
towed us another mile or so to a camping 
place. 

Having moored the boats, we lined up on 
the shore and had a song. It was a quintet, 
consisting of a Frenchman, an Englishman, 
an Irishman, a Cornishman, and a German. 
A very strong quintet it was; that is to say, 
strong on volume. As to quality — we were n't 
thrusting ourselves upon an audience. The 
river and the sky did n't seem to mind, and, 
the cliffs sang after us, lagging a beat or two. 



Getting Down to Business 185 

We wished to sing ever so beautifully; and, 
after all, it would be much better to have 
the whole world wishing to sing melodiously, 
than to have just a few masters here and 
there who really can! Did you ever hear a 
barefooted, freckle-faced ploughboy singing 
powerfully and quite out of tune, the stubble 
fields about him still glistening with the 
morning dew, and the meadow larks joining 
in from the fence-posts? I have: and soaring 
above the faulty execution, I heard the lark- 
heart of the never-aging world wooing the 
far-off eternal dawn. True song is merely a 
hopeful condition of the soul. And so I am 
sure we sang very wonderfully that night. 

And how the flapjacks disappeared as a 
result of that singing! We ate until Charley 
refused to bake any more; then we rolled up 
in our blankets by the fire and ''swapped 
lies," dropping off one at a time into sleep 
until the last speaker finished his story with 
only the drowsy stars for an audience. At 
least I suppose it was so; I was not the last 
speaker. 

Alas! too seldom were we to hail the even- 



i86 The River and I 

ing star with song. So far we had made in a 
week Httle more than one hundred and fifty 
miles. With the exception of a few hours of 
head winds, that week had been a week of 
dream. We now awoke fully to the fact that 
in low water season the Missouri is not swift. 
In our early plans we had fallen in with the 
popular fallacy that one need only cut loose 
and let the current do the rest; whereas, in 
low water, one would probably never reach 
the end of his journey by that method. In 
addition to this, our gasoline was running low. 
We had trusted to irrigation plants for 
replenishing our supply from time to time. 
But the great flood of the spring had swept 
the valley clean. Where the year before 
there were prosperous ranch establishments 
with gasoline pumping plants, there was only 
desolation now. It was as though we trav- 
elled in the path of a devastating army. 
Perhaps the summer of 1908 was the most 
unfavorable season for such a trip in the last 
fifty years. Steamboating on the upper river 
is only a memory. There are now no wood- 
yards as formerly. We found ourselves with 



Getting Down to Business 187 

no certainty of procuring grub and oil; our 
engine became more and more untrust- 
worthy; our paddles had been lost. What 
winds we had generally blew against us, and 
the character of the banks was changing. 
The cliffs gave way to broad alluvial valleys, 
over which, at times, the gales swept with 
terrific force. 

Our map told us of a number of river 
"towns." We had already been partially 
disillusioned as to the character of those 
"towns." They were pretty much in a class 
with Goodale, except that they lacked the 
switch and the box-car and the sign. Just 
now Rocky Point lay ahead of us. Rocky 
Point meant a new supply of food and oil. 
Stimulated by this thought, Charley cranked 
heroically under the blistering sun and man- 
aged to arouse the engine now and then into 
spasms of speed. He had not yet begun to 
swear. Fearfully I awaited the first evidence 
of the new mood, which I knew must come. 

At least once a day we put the machinery 
on the operating table. Each time we suc- 
ceeded only in developing new symptoms. 



i88 The River and I 

At a point about fifty miles from the 
''town" so deeply longed for, a lone cow- 
punch appeared on the bank. 

"How far to Rocky Point?" I cried. 

''Oh, something less than two hundred 
miles!" drawled the horseman. (How care- 
lessly they juggle with miles in that big 
country !) 

"It's just a little place, isn't it?" I con- 
tinued. 

"Little place!" answered the cow-punch; 
"hell, no!" 

"What!" I cried in glee; "Is it really a 
town of importance?" I had visions of a 
budding metropolis, full of gasoline and grub. 

"I guess it ain't a little place," explained 
the rider; ''w'y, they 've got nigh onto ten 
thousand cattle down there!'' 

Ten minutes after that, Charley, after a 
desperate but unsuccessful fit of cranking, 
straightened the kink out of his back, mopped 
the perspiration from his face — and swore I 

Almost immediately I felt, or at least 
thought I felt, a distinct change in the temper 
of the crew — for the worse. We used the 



Getting Down to Business 191 

better part of two days covering the last fifty 
miles into Rocky Point, only to find that the 
place consisted of a log ranch-house, two 
women, an old man, and "Texas." The 
cattle and the other men were scattered over 
a hundred miles or so of range. The women 
either would not or could not supply us with 
grub, explaining that the nearest railroad 
town was ninety miles away. Gasoline was 
out of the question. We might be able to 
buy some at the mouth of Milk River, two 
hundred miles down stream! 

"Texas," who made me think of Gargan- 
tua, and who had a chest like a bison bull's, 
and a drawling fog-horn voice, ran a saloon 
in an odd little shanty boat brought down 
by the flood. He solved the problem for us. 

"You cain't get no gasoline short o' Milk 
River," he bellowed drawlingly; "and you 
sure got to paddle, so you better buy 
whiskey!" 

While we were deciding to accept the 
offered advice, "Texas" whittled a stick and 
got off a few jokes of Rabelaisian directness. 
We laughed heartily, and as a mark of his 



192 The River and I 

appreciation, he gave us five quarts for a gal- 
lon. Which proved, in spite of his appear- 
ance, that "Texas" was very human. 

We gave the engine a final trial. It ran 
by spasms — ^backwards. Then, finally, it re- 
fused to run at all. We tried to make our- 
selves believe that the gasoline was too low 
in the tank, that the pressure of the oil had 
something to do with it. At first we really 
knew better. But days of drudgery at the 
paddles transformed the makeshift hope into 
something almost like a certainty. 

There was no lumber at Rocky Point. We 
rummaged through a pile of driftwood and 
found some half-rotted two-by-sixes. These 
we hacked into paddles. They weighed, 
when thoroughly soaked, at least fifteen 
pounds apiece. 

Sending Bill and Frank on ahead with the 
skiff and the small store of provisions, Charley 
and I, the Kid at the steering rope, set out 
pushing the power canoe with the paddles. 
The skiff was very soon out of sight. 

The Atom, very fast under power, was, 
with paddles, the slowest boat imaginable. 



Getting Down to Business 193 

There was no lift to her prow, no exhilarating 
leap as with the typical light canoe driven by 
regulation paddles. And she was as unwiedly 
as a log. A light wind blew up-stream, and 
the current was very slow. After dark we 
caught up with Bill and Frank, who had sup- 
per waiting. I had been tasting venison all 
day; but there was none for supper. In 
spite of a night's smoking, all of it had spoiled. 
This left us without meat. Our provisions 
now consisted mostly of flour. We had a few 
potatoes and some toasted wind called "break- 
fast food." During six or seven hours of 
hard work at the paddles, we had covered no 
more than fifteen miles. These facts put 
together gave no promising result. In addi- 
tion to this, it was impossible to stir up a song. 
Even the liquor would n't bring it out. And 
the flapjacks were not served a la chanson- 
nette that night. I tried to explain why the 
trip was only beginning to get interesting; 
but my words fell flat. And when the irre- 
pressible Kid essayed a joke, I alone laughed 
at it, though rather out of gratitude than 
mirth. 



194 The River and I 

There are many men who hve and die with 
the undisputed reputation of being good fel- 
lows — your friends and mine — who, if put 
to the test, would fail miserably. Fortunate 
is that man to whom it is not given to test all 
of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is 
only human nature; and I love human nature, 
being myself possessed of so much of it. I 
admire it when it stands firmly upon its legs, 
and I love it when it wobbles. But when it 
gains power with increasing odds, grows big 
with obstacles, I worship it. 

" To thrill with the joy of girded men, 
To go on forever and fail, and go on again — 
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night — ' ' 

Thus it should have been. But that night, 
staring into the faces of three of the four, I 
saw the yellow streak. The Kid was not one 
of the three. The first railroad station would 
hold out no temptation to him. He was a 
kid, but manhood has little to do with age. 
It must exist from the first like a tang of iron 
in the blood. Age does not really create 
anything — it only develops. Your wonderful 



Getting Down to Business 197 

and beautiful things often come as para- 
doxes. I looked for a man and found him in 
a boy. 

Bil talked about home and stared into the 
twilight. The ''floaters" were irritable, quar- 
relling with the fire, the grub, the cooking- 
utensils, and verbally sending the engine to 
the devil. 

Seeing about eighteen hundred miles of 
paddle work ahead, knowing that at that 
season of the year the prevailing winds would 
be head winds, and having very little faith in 
the engine under any conditions, I decided 
to travel day and night, for the water was 
falling steadily and already the channels were 
at times hard to find. Charley and Frank 
grumbled. I told them we would split the 
grub fairly, a fifth to a man, and that they 
might travel as slowly as they liked, the skiff 
being their property. They stayed with us. 

We lashed the boats together and put off 
into the slow current. A haggard, eerie 
fragment of moon slinked westward. Stars 
glinted in the flawless chilly blue. The sur- 
face of the river was like polished ebony — a 



198 The River and I 

dream-path wrought of gloom and gleam. 
The banks were lines of dusk, except where 
some lone cottonwood loomed skyward like a 
giant ghost clothed with a mantle that glist- 
ered and darkled in the chill star-sheen. 

There was the feel of moving in eternity 
about it all. The very limitation of the dusk 
gave the feeling of immensity. There was no 
sense of motion, yet we moved. The sky 
seemed as much below as above. We seemed 
suspended in a hollow globe. Now and then 
the boom of a diving beaver's tail accented 
the clinging quiet; and by fits the drowsy 
muttering of waterfowl awoke in the adjacent 
swamps, and droned back into the universal 
hush. 

Frank and I stood watch, the three others 
rolling up in their blankets among the lug- 
gage. It occurred to me for the first tim.e 
that we had a phonograph under the cargo. 
I went down after it. At random I chose a 
record and set the machine going. It was a 
Chopin Nocturne played on a 'cello — a vocal 
yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, 
a brushing of sick wings across the gates of 



Getting Down to Business 199 

heavens never to be entered; and then the 
finale — an insistent, feverish repetition of the 
human ache, ceasing as with utter exhaustion. 

I looked about me drinking in the night. 
How little this music really expressed it! It 
seemed too humanly near-sighted, too egotis- 
tic, too petty to sound out under those far- 
seeing stars, in that divine quiet. 

I slipped on another record. This time it 
was a beautiful little song, full of the sweet 
melancholy of love. I shut it down. The 
thing would n't do. In the evening — yes. 
But now! Truly there is something womanly 
about Night, something loverlike in a vast 
impersonal way; but too big — she is too ter- 
ribly big to woo with human sentiment. 
Only a windlike chant would do — something 
with an undertone of human despair, out- 
soared by brave, savage flights of invincible 
soul-hope — great virile singing man-cries, 
winged as the starlight, weird as space — 
Whitman sublimated, David's soul poured out 
in symphony. 

I started another going. This time I did 
not stop it, for the Night was singing — 



200 The River and I 

— through its nose perhaps, but still it was 
singing — out of that machine. It was Wag- 
ner's Evening Star played by an orchestra. 
It filled the night, swept the glittering 
reaches, groped about in the glooms; and 
then, leaving the human theme behind, soul- 
like the upward yearning violins took flight, 
dissolving at last into starlight and immensity. 
Ages swept by me like a dream- wind. When 
I got back, the machine, all but run down, 
was scratching hideously. 

Slowly we swung about in the scarcely percep- 
tible current. Down among the luggage the 
three snored discordantly. Frank's cigarette 
glowed intermittently against the dim horizon, 
like a bonfire far off. Somewhere out in the 
gloom coyotes chattered and yelped, and 
from far across the dusky valley others an- 
swered — a doleful tenson. 

I dozed. Frank awoke us all with a shout. 
We leaped up and stared blinkingly into the 
north. That whole region of the sky was 
aflame from zenith to horizon with spectral 
fires. It was the aurora. Not the pale, 
ragged glow, sputtering like the ghost of a 



Getting Down to Business 201 

huge lamp-flame, which is famiHar to every 
one, but a billowing of color, rainbows gone 
mad! In the northeast the long rolling col- 
umns formed — many-colored clouds of spec- 
tral light whipped up as by a whirlwind — flung 
from eastward to westward, devouring Polaris 
and the Wain — rapid sequent towers of 
smokeless fire ! 

It dazzled and whirled and mounted and 
fell like the illumined filmy skirts of some 
invisible Titanic serpentine dancer, madly 
pirouetting across a carpet of stars. Then 
suddenly it all fell into a dull ember-glow and 
flashed out. The ragged moon dropped out 
of the southwestern sky. In the chill of the 
night, gray, dense fog wraiths crawled upon 
the hidden face of the waters. 

Again I dozed and awakened with the sense 
of having stopped suddenly. A light wind 
had arisen and we were fast on a bar. Frank 
and I took our blankets out on the sand, 
rolled up and went to sleep. 

The red of dawn awoke us as though some 
one had shouted. Frank and I sat up and 
stared about. A white- tail deer was drinking 



202 The River and I 

at the river's edge three hundred yards away. 
So far as we were concerned, it was a dream- 
deer. We bHnked complacently at it until 
it disappeared in the brush. Then we thought 
of the rifle. 

We were all stiff and chilled. The boats 
were motionless in shallow water. We all 
got out in the stream that felt icy to us, 
and waded the crafts into the channel. 
Incidentally we remembered Texas and his 
wisdom. 

The time was early August; but nev- 
ertheless there was a tang of frost in the 
air and the river seemed to flow not water 
but a thick frore fog. I smelled persimmons 
distinctly — it was that cold; brown spicy 
persimmons smashed on crisp autumn leaves 
down in old Missouri! The smell haunted 
me all morning like a bitter-sweet regret. 

We breakfasted on flapjacks and, separat- 
ing the boats, put off. The skiff left us 
easily and disappeared. A head wind arose 
with the sun and increased steadily. By 
eleven o'clock it blew so strongly that we 
could make no headway with the rude pad- 



Getting Down to Business 203 

dies, and the waves, rolling at least four feet 
from trough to crest, made it impossible to 
hold the boat in course. We quit paddling, 
and got out in the water with the line. Two 
pulled and one pushed. All day we waded, 
sometimes up to our necks; sometimes we 
swam a bit, and sometimes we clung to the 
boat and kicked it on to the next shallows. 
Our progress was ridiculously slow, but we 
kept moving. When we stopped for a few 
minutes to smoke under the lee of a bank, our 
legs cramped. 

To lay up one day would be only to estab- 
lish a precedent for day after day of inactiv- 
ity. The prevailing winds would be head 
winds. We clung to the shoddy hope held 
out by that magic name — Milk River. We 
knew too well that Milk River was only a 
snare and a delusion; but one must fight 
toward something — it makes little difference 
what you call that something. A goal, in 
itself, is an empty thing; all the virtue lies 
in the moving toward the goal. 

Often we sank deep in the mud; often at 
the bends we could scarcely forge against the 



204 The River and I 

blast that held us leaning to the pull. Noon 
came and still we had not overtaken the skiff. 
Dark came, and we had not yet sighted it. 
But with the sun, the wind fell, and we 
paddled on, lank and chilled. About ten 
o'clock we sighted the campfire. 

We ate flapjacks once more — delicious, 
butterless flapjacks! — and then once more 
we put off into the chill night. We made 
twelve miles that day, and every foot had 
been a fight. I wanted to raise it to twenty- 
five before sunrise. No one gnmibled this 
time; but in the light of the campfire the 
faces looked cheerless — except the Kid's face. 

We huddled up in our blankets and, 
naturally, all of us went to sleep. A great 
shock brought us to our feet. The moon 
had set and the sky was overcast. Thick 
night clung around us. We saw nothing, but 
by the rocking of the boats and the roaring 
of the river, we knew we were shooting 
rapids. 

Still dazed with sleep, I had a curious sense 
of being whirled at a terrific speed into some 
subterranean suck of waters. There was 



Gettinor Down to Business 205 



'fe 



nothing to do but wait. We struck rocks and 
went rolling, shipping buckets of water at 
every dip. Then there was a long sickening 
swoop through utter blackness. It ended 
abruptly with a thud that knocked us 
down. 

We found that we were no longer moving. 
We got out, hanging to the gunwales. The 
boats were lodged on a reef of rock, and we 
were obliged to "walk" them for some dis- 
tance, when suddenly the water deepened, 
and we all went up to our necks. And the 
night seemed bitterly cold. I never shivered 
more in January. 

It was yet too dark to find a camping place; 
so we drifted on until the east paled. Then 
we built a great log fire and baked ourselves 
until sunrise. 

Day after day my log-book begins with the 
words, ''Heavy head winds," and ends with 
"Drifted most of the night." We covered 
about twenty-five miles every twenty-four 
hours. Every day the cooks gnmibled 
more; and Bill had a way of staring wistfully 
into the distance and talking about home. 



2o6 The River and I 

that produced in me an odd mixture of anger 
and pity. 

We had lost our map : we had no calendar. 
Time and distance, curiously confused, were 
merely a weariness in the shoulders. 



CHAPTER VII 

ON TO THE YELLOWSTONE 

A T last one evening (shall I confess it?) 
^^ we had blue-crane soup for supper! 

Now a flight of gray-blue cranes across a 
pearl-gray sky, shot with threads of evening 
scarlet, makes a masterly picture: indeed, 
an effect worthy of reproduction in Art. You 
see a Japanese screen done in heroic size ; and 
it is a sight to make you long exquisitely for 

things that are not — like a poet. But 

Let us have no illusions about this matter! 
Crane soup is not satisfactory. It looks gray- 
blue and tastes gray-blue, and gives to your 
psychic inwardness a dull, gray-blue, mel- 
ancholy tone. And when you nibble at the 
boiled gray-blue meat of an adult crane, you 
catch yourself wondering just what sort of 
ragout could be made out of boots; you have 

207 



2o8 The River and I 

a morbid longing to know just how bad such 
a ragout would really be! 

Hereafter on whatever trails I may follow, 
blue cranes shall be used chiefly for Japanese 
screen effects. Little by little (the latent phi- 
losopher in me emerges to remark) by exper- 
ience we place not only ourselves but all things 
in their proper places in the universe. This 
process of fitting things properly in one's 
cosmos seems to be one of the chief aims of 
conscious life. Therefore I score one for my- 
self — ^having placed blue cranes permanently 
in that cosmic nook given over to Japanese 
screen effects ! 

Next morning we pushed on. The taste 
of that crane soup clung to me all day like 
the memory of an old sorrow dulled by time. 

Deer tracks were plentiful, but it has long 
been conceded that the tracks are by far the 
least edible things pertaining to an animal. 
Cranes seemed to have multiplied rapidly. 
Impudently tame, they lined the gravel-bars, 
and regarded us curiously as we fought our 
way past them. Now and then a flock of 
wild ducks alighted several hundred yards 



On to the Yellowstone 209 

from us. We had only a rifle. To shoot a 
moving duck out of a moving boat with a 
rifle is a feat attended with some difficulties. 
Once we wounded a wild goose, but it got 
away; which offended our sense of poetic 
justice. After crane soup one would seem 
to deserve roast goose. 

I scanned the dreary monotonous valleys 
stretching away from the river. We had for 
several days been living on scenery, tobacco, 
and flapjacks. The scenery had flattened out, 
tobacco was running low; but the flapjacks 
bid fair to go on forever. I sought in my head 
for the exact adjective, the particular epithet 
with the inevitable feel about it, with which 
to describe that monotonous melancholy 
stretch. Every time I tried, I came back to 
the word "baconless.'' The word took on 
exquisite overtones of gray meaning, and I 
worked up those overtones until I had a 
perfectly wrought melancholy poem of one 
word — "Baconless.'' For, after all, a poem 
never existed upon paper, but lives subtly 
in the consciousness of the poet, and in the 
minds of those who understand the poet 



210 The River and I 

through the suggestiveness of his written 
symbols, and their own remembered exper- 
iences. 

But during the next morning, poetic justice 
worked. A rider mounted on a piebald 
pony appeared on the bank and shouted for 
us to pull in. 

I suddenly realized why a dog wags his tail 
at a stranger. But the feeling I had was big- 
ger than that. This mounted man became at 
once for me the incarnation of the meaning of 
bacon ! 

When two parties meet and each wants 
what the other can give, it does n't take long 
to get acquainted. The rider was a youth of 
about seventeen. One glance at his face 
told you the story of his rearing. He was 
unmistakably city-bred, and his hands showed 
that his life had begun too easy for his own 
good. 

"From the East?" he questioned joyously. 
"Say, you know little old New York, don't 
you? When were you there last?" 

The lad was hungry, but not for bacon. 
Alas! Our hunger was the healthier one! 



On to the Yellowstone 211 

We talked of New York. "Mother's in 
Paris," he volunteered, "and Dad 's in New 
York meeting her bills. But the Old Man 's 
got a grouch at me, and so he sent me 'way 
out here in this God-forsaken country! Say, 
what did they make this country for? Got 
any tailor-made cigarettes about you ? How 
did Broadway look when you were there last? 
Lights all there yet at night? I 've been here 
two years — it seems like two hundred! Talk 
about Robinson Crusoe! Say, I 've got him 
distanced ! ' ' 

I helped him build up a momentary Broad- 
way there in the wilderness — the lights, the 
din, the hurrying, jostling theatre crowds, the 
cafes, faces, faces — anguished faces, eager 
faces, weary faces, painted faces, squalor, 
brilliance. For me the memory of it only 
made me feel the pity of it all. But the lad's 
eyes beamed. He was homesick for Broad- 
way. 

I changed the subject from prose to poetry; 
that is, from Broadway to bacon. 

"Wait here till I come back," said the lad, 
mounting. He spurred up a gulch and dis- 



212 The River and I 

appeared. In an hour he reappeared with a 
half strip of the precious stuff. ''Take money 
for it? Not on your life!" he insisted. 
"You 've been down there, and that goes for 
a meal ticket with me!" 

Fried bacon! And flapjacks sopped in the 
grease of it ! After all, a banquet is very much 
a state of mind. 

When we pulled away, the ostracized New 
Yorker bade us farewell with a snatch of a 
song once more or less popular: "Give my 
regards to Broadway!" 

We pushed on vigorously now. The head 
wind came up. The head wind! It seemed 
one of the eternal things. We paddled and 
cordelled valiantly, discussing Milk River 
the while. We had grown very credulous on 
that subject. Somehow or other an unlimited 
supply of gasoline was all the engine needed 
for the complete restoration of its health; 
and Milk River stood for gasoline in liberal 
quantities. Hope is generally represented by 
the poets as a thing winged and ethereal; 
nevertheless it can be fed on bacon. 

The next morning we arrived at the mouth 



On to the Yellowstone 215 

of what we took to be Hell Creek, which 
flows (when it has any water in it !) out of the 
Bad Lands. It did n't take much imagina- 
tion to name that creek. The whole country 
from which it debouches looks like Hell — 
"with the lights out," as General Sully once 
remarked. A country of lifeless hills that had 
the appearance of an endless succession of 
huge black cinder heaps from prehistoric fires. 

The wind had increased steadily all day, 
and now we saw ahead of us a long rolling 
stretch of wind-lashed river that discouraged 
us somewhat. A gray mist rolled with the 
wind, and dull clouds scudded over. We 
pitched camp in a clump of cottonwoods and 
made flapjacks; after which the Kid and I, 
taking our blankets and the rifle, set out to 
explore Hell Creek. 

The windings of the ravine soon hid us 
from the river, and we found ourselves in a 
melancholy world, without life and without 
any human significance. It was very easy 
to imagine one's self lost amid the drear 
ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on 
up the creek, kicking up clouds of alkali dust 



2i6 The River and I 

as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, 
to be sure. It seemed almost blasphemous 
to call this arid gully a creek. Boys swim in 
creeks, and fishes twinkle over the shallows 
where the sweet eager waters make a merry 
sound. Creek, indeed! Did a cynic name 
this dry ragged gash in the midst of a bleak 
black world where nothing lived, where never 
laughter sounded? 

A seething, fiery ooze might have flowed 
there once, but surely never did v/ater make 
music there. 

We pushed on five or six miles, and the 
evening shade began to press in about us. At 
last we issued forth into a flat basin, sur- 
rounded by the weird hills — a grotesque, 
wind-carved amphitheatre, admirably suited 
for a witches' orgy. Some bleached bison 
heads with horns lay scattered about the 
place, and a cluster of soapweeds grew there — 
God knows how! They thrust their sere 
yellow sword-blades skyward with the pitiful 
defiance of desperate things. It seemed nat- 
ural enough that something should be dead 
in this sepulchre; but the living weeds, 



On to the Yellowstone 219 

fighting bitterly for life, seemed out of 
place. 

I looked about and thought of Poe. Surely 
just beyond those summits where the mel- 
ancholy sky touched the melancholy hills, 
one would come upon the "dank tarn of 
Auber" and the "ghoul-haunted woodland of 
Weir." 

We gathered a quantity of the dry sword- 
bladed soapweeds, and with one of the 
blankets made a lean-to shelter against the 
steep hillside. The place was becoming eerie 
in the gray evening that spread slowly over 
the dead land. The mist driven by the 
moaning wind became a melancholy drizzle. 
We dragged the soapweeds under cover and 
lit a fire with difficulty. It was a half-hearted, 
smudgy, cheerless fire. 

And then the night fell — tremendous, over- 
powering night! The Kid and I, huddled 
close in one blanket, thrust our heads out 
from under the shelter and watched the 
ghastly world leap by fits out of the dark, 
when the sheet lightning flared through the 
drizzle. It gave one an odd shivery feeling. 



220 The River and I 

It was as though one groped about a strange 
dark room and saw, for a brief moment in the 
spurting glow of a wind-blown sulphur match, 
the staring face of a dead man. Over us the 
great wind groaned. Water dripped through 
the blanket — like tears. We scraped the 
last damp ends of the weeds together that 
the fire might live a little longer. Byron's 
poem came back to me with a new force; 
and lying on my stomach in the cheerless drip 
before a drowning fire, I chanted snatches of it 
aloud to the Kid and to that sinister person- 
ality that was the Night. 

I had a dream which was not all a dream; 

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars 

Did wander darkling in eternal space, 

Rayless and pathless; and the icy earth 

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air. 

Low thunder shook the ink-sopped night — 
I thought of it as the Spirit of Byron applaud- 
ing his own terrific lines. 

A fearful hope was all the world contained; 
Forests were set on fire — but hour by hour 
They fell and faded — and the crackling trunks 
Extinguished with a crash — and all was black. 



On to the Yellowstone 223 

Out in the wind- voiced darkness, swept by 
spasmodic deluges of rapid flame and muffled 
thunder, it seemed I could hear the dream- 
forests of the moody Master crackling and 
booming in the gloom. 

— looked up 
With mad disquietude on the dull sky, 
The pall of a past world. 

" Say, how long is that piece ?" asked the 
Kid. 

And vipers crawled 

And twined themselves among the multitude, 

Hissing — 

We wondered if there might not be some 
rattlesnakes in that vicinity. 

— They raked up 

And shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hands 

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath 

Blew for a little life, and made a flame 

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up 

Their eyes as it grew brighter, and beheld 

Each other's aspects — saw and shrieked and died — 

"Cut that out!" said the Kid. 
"Why?" I asked. 



224 The River and I 

"Because," said the Kid. 

But what are Bad Lands for? I had hoped 
to chant a bit of James Thomson, the younger, 
also, there in that ''dreadful night." I never 
was in a place where it seemed to fit so well. 

But we huddled up in our blanket under 
the dripping shelter, and I gave myself over 
to a downright, almost wickedly primitive 
feeling. We slept some — but that was a 
rather long night. The soppy gray morning 
came at length. A midsummer morning after 
a night of rain — and yet, no bird, no hopeful 
greenery, no sense of the upward yearning 
Earth-Soul! 

When we sighted the Missouri River again, 
the sun had broken through upon the 
greengirt, glinting stream. It seemed like 
Paradise. 

By almost continuous travel we reached 
Lismus Ferry on the second morning from 
Hell Creek. The ferryman had a bit of in- 
formation for us. We would find nothing 
at the mouth of Milk River but a sandbar, 
he advised us. But he had some ointment 
to apply to the wound thus inflicted, in that 



On to the Yellowstone 227 

Glasgow, a town on the Great Northern, was 
only twenty-five miles inland. The weekly 
stage had left on the morning before; but the 
ferryman understood that the trail was not 
overcrowded with pedestrians. 

It was a smarting ointment to apply to so 
fresh a wound; but we took the medicine. 
Frank, Charley, and I set out at once for 
Glasgow, leaving the others at camp to repair 
the leaking boat during our absence. The 
stage trail led through an arid, undulating 
prairie of yellow biiffalo grass. There were 
creek beds, but they were filled with dust at 
this season of the year. The Englishman 
set the pace with the stride of the long-legged. 
The sun rose high; the dry runs reminded us 
unpleasantly of our increasing thirst, and the 
pufiing wind blew hot as from a distant prairie 
fire. 

I followed at the Englishman's heels, and 
by and by it began to occur to me that he 
could walk rather rapidly. The Frenchman 
trailed after at a steadily increasing distance, 
until finally I could no longer hear his forceful 
remarks (uttered in two languages) concern- 



228 The River and I 

ing a certain corn which he possessed. We 
had been cramped up in a boat for several 
weeks, and the frequent soakings in the cold 
water had done little good to our joints. 
None of us was fit for walking. I kept back 
a limp until the Englishman ahead of me 
began to step with a little jerking of the 
knees; and then with an almost vicious 
delight, I gave over and limped. I never 
knew before the great luxury of limping. We 
covered the distance in something less than 
six hours. 

The next morning, in a drizzling rain, each 
packing a five-gallon can of gasoline and 
some provisions, we set out for the Ferry; 
and it was a sorry, bedraggled trio that 
limped up to camp eight hours later. We 
did little more than creep the last five miles. 
And all for a spiteful little engine that might 
prove ungrateful in the end! 

It rained all night — a cold, insistent down- 
pour. Our log fire was drowned out; the 
tent dripped steadily ; our blankets got soppy ; 
and three of us were so stiff that the least 
movement gave keen pain. 



On to the Yellowstone 231 

Soppy dawn — wet wood — bad grub for 
breakfast — and bad humor concealed with 
difficulty; but through it all ran a faint note 
of victory at the thought of the gasoline, and 
the way that engine would go! We lay in 
camp all day — soppy, sore — waiting for the 
rain to let up. By way of cheering up I read 
UAssomoir; and a grim graveyard substitute 
for cheer it was. But the next day broke with 
a windy, golden dawn. We filled the tank, 
packed the luggage and lo ! the engine worked ! 
It took all the soreness out of our legs to see 
it go. 

We rejoiced now in the heavy and steadily 
increasing head wind; for it was like con- 
quering an old enemy to go crashing through 
the rolling water that had for so many days 
given us pitiless battle. 

For five or six miles we plunged on down the 
wind-tumbled river. There was a distinct 
change in the temper of the crew. A vote at 
that time would have been unanimous for 
finishing at New Orleans. 

Squash I 

The engine stopped; the Atom swung round 



232 The River and I 

in the trough of the waves, and the tow-skiff 
rammed us, trying to chmb over our gunwale. 
We wallowed in the wash of a bar, and cranked 
by turns. At the end of an hour no illusions 
were left us. Holding an inquest over the 
engine, we pronounced it dead. 

In the drear fag end of the windy day, 
soaked from much wading and weary of 
paddling with little headway, we made camp 
in a clump of scarlet bull-berry bushes; and 
by the evening fire two talked of railroad 
stations, one talked of home, and I thought 
of that one of the ''soldiers three" who 
"swore quietly into the sky." 

The Milk River illusion was lost. Two 
hundred miles below was the mouth of the 
Yellowstone — the first station in the long 
journey. A few days back we had longed 
for gasoline; but there was no one to sell. 
Now we had fifteen gallons to sell — and there 
was no one to buy. The hope v/ithout the 
gasoline was decidedly better than the gaso- 
line without the hope. Whereat the phi- 
losopher in me emerges to remark — but who 
cares? Philosophy proceeds backward, and 



On to the Yellowstone 235 

points out errors of thought and action chiefly 
when it has become too late to mend them. 
But it is possible to be poor in the possession 
of erstwhile prospective wealth, and rich in 
retrospective poverty. Oh, blessed is he 
who is negatively rich! 

Being a bit stunned by the death of the hope 
conceived in weariness, we did not put off 
that night, but huddled up in our blankets 
close to the log fire ; for this midsummer night 
had in it a tang of frost. 

Day came — cloudy and cold — blown over 
the wilderness by a wind that made the 
cottonwoods above us groan and pop. The 
waves were higher than we had seen them 
before. We had little heart for cordelling, 
and no paddling could make headway against 
that gale. It was Sunday. Everything was 
damp and chilly. Shivers ran up our backs 
while we toasted our feet and faces; and the 
wind-whipt smoke had a way of blowing in 
every direction at once. Charley struggled 
with the engine, which now and then made 
a few revolutions — backwards — by way of 
leading him on. He heaped big curses upon 



236 The River and I 

it, and it replied periodically with snorts of 
rage. 

Bad blood developed, and mutiny ensued, 
which once gave promise of pirate-story 
developments — ^fortunately warded off. Be- 
fore the day was done, it was made plain that 
the Kid and I would travel alone from the 
mouth of the Yellowstone. ''For," said the 
Kid with certain virile decorations of speech, 
"I'm going with you if we have to buy 
skates!" 

The wind fell at sunset. A chill, moonless, 
starry night lured me, and I decided to travel. 
The mutineers, eager to reach a railroad as 
soon as possible, agreed to go. The skiff led 
and the Atom followed with paddles. A mile 
or so below we ran into shallows and grounded. 
We waded far around in the cold water that 
chilled us to the marrow, but could find neither 
entrance nor outlet to the pocket in which we 
found ourselves. Wading ashore, we made a 
cheerless camp in the brush, leaving the boats 
stuck in the shallows. For the first time, 
the division in the camp was well marked. 
The Kid and I instinctively made our bed 




ASSINIBOINE INDIAN CHIEF 



237 



On to the Yellowstone 239 

together under one blanket, and the others 
bunked apart. We had become the main 
party of the expedition; the others were now 
merely enforced camp followers. It was 
funny in an unpleasant way. 

In the morning a sea of stiff fog hid our 
boats. Packing the camp stuff on our backs, 
we waded about and found the crafts. 

At last, after a nimiber of cheerless days 
and nights of continuous travel, the great, 
open, rolling prairies ahead of us indicated our 
approach toward the end of the journey's 
first stage. The country began to look like 
North Dakota, though we were still nearly two 
hundred miles away. The monotony of the 
landscape was depressing. It seemed a thou- 
sand miles to the sunrise. The horizon was 
merely a blue haze — and the endless land was 
sere. The river ran for days with a succes- 
sion of regularly occurring right-angled bends 
to the north and east. Each headland shot 
out in the same way, with, it seemed, the 
same snags in the water under it, and the 
same cottonwoods growing on it; and oppo- 
site each headland was the same stony bluff, 



240 The River and I 

wind- and water-carved in the same way: 
until at last we cried out against the tedious- 
ness of the oft-repeated story, wondering 
whether or not we were continually passing 
the same point, and somehow slipping back 
to pass it again. 

But at last we reached Wolf Point — the 
first town in five hundred miles. We had 
seen no town since we left Benton. An odd 
little burlesque of a town it was; but walking 
up its main street we felt very metropolitan 
after weeks on those lonesome river stretches. 

Five Assiniboine Indian girls seemed to be 
the only women in the town. I coaxed them 
to stand for a photograph on the incontest- 
able grounds that they were by far the 
prettiest women I had seen for many days! 
The effect of my generous praise is fixed for- 
ever on the pictured faces presented here- 
with. 

Here, during the day, Frank and Charley 
disposed of their skiff and we saw them no 
more. We pushed on with little mourning. 
But in a spirit of fairness, let me record that 
Charley's biscuits were marvels, and that 



On to the Yellowstone 243 

Frank's gateaux a la chansonnette were things 
of beauty and therefore joys forever. 

The days that followed were long and hard; 
and half the chilly nights were spent in drying 
ourselves before a roaring fire. There were 
more mosquitoes now. They began to tor- 
ture us at about five o'clock in the afternoon, 
and left off only when the cold of night came, 
relieving us of one discomfort by the substitu- 
tion of another. Bill, of whom I had come 
to think as the expatriated turnip, gave me 
an opportunity to study homesickness — at 
once pitiful and ludicrous in a man with 
abundant whiskers. But he pulled strenu- 
ously at the forward paddle, every stroke, as 
he remarked often, taking him closer to home. 

The river had fallen alarmingly, and was 
still falling. Several times we were obliged 
to unload the entire cargo, piling it high in 
the shallow water, that we might be able to 
carry the empty boat to the channel. 

One evening we came upon a typical Mon- 
tana ranch — the Pen and Key. The resi- 
dence, barns, sheds, fences were built of logs. 
The great rolling country about it was 



244 The River and I 

thickly dotted with horses and cattle. The 
place looked like home. It was a sight from 
Pisgah — a glimpse of a Promised Land after 
the Wilderness. We pulled in, intending to 
buy some provisions for the last stage of the 
journey to the Yellowstone. 

I went up to the main ranch-house, and was 
met at the door by one of those blessed 
creatures that have "mother" written all 
over them. Hers were not the eyes of a 
stranger. She looked at me as she must look 
at one of her sons when he returns from an 
extended absence. I told at once the pur- 
pose of my errand, explaining briefly what 
we were doing on the river. Why, yes, cer- 
tainly we could have provisions. But we 
were n't going any farther that night — ^were 
we ? The rancher appeared at this moment — 
a retired major of the army, who looked the 
part — and decided that we would stay for 
supper. How many were there in our party? 
Three? ''Three more plates," he said to the 
daughters of the house, busy about the 
kitchen. 

Let 's be frank! It really required no per- 



On to the Yellowstone 247 

suasion at all to make a guest of me. Had I 
allowed myself adequate expression of my 
delight, I should have startled the good 
mother by turning a somersault or a series 
of cartwheels! Oh, the smell of an old- 
fashioned wholesome meal in process of 
development ! 

A short while back I sang the praises of the 
feast in the open — the feast of your own kill, 
tanged with the wood smoke. And even 
here I cling to the statement that of all meals, 
the feast of wild meat in the wilderness takes 
precedence. But the supper we ate that 
evening takes close second. Welcome on 
every face! — the sort of welcome that the 
most lavish tips could not buy. And after 
the dishes were cleared away, they brought 
out a phonograph, and we all sat round like 
one family, swapping information and yams 
even up, while the music went on. When we 
left next morning at sunrise, it seemed that 
we were leaving home — and the river reaches 
looked a bit dismal all that day. 

Having once been a vagabond in a non- 
Drofessional way, I have a theory about 



248 The River and I 

the physiognomy of houses. Some have a 
forbidding, sick-the-dog-on-you aspect about 
them, not at all due, I am sure, to architect- 
ural design. Experience has taught me to be 
suspicious of such houses. Some houses have 
the appearance of death — their windows strike 
you as eyeless sockets, the doors look like 
mouths that cannot speak. The great houses 
along Fifth Avenue seemed like that to me. 
I could walk past them in the night and feel 
like a ghost. I have seen cottages that I 
wanted to kneel to; and I 'm sure this feeling 
was n't due to the vine growing over the 
porch or the roses nodding in the yard. 
Knock at the door of such a house, and the 
chances are in favor of your being met by a 
quiet, motherly woman — one who will in- 
stantly make you think of your own mother. 
Some very well constructed houses look 
surly, and some shabby ones look kind, some- 
how. If you have ever been a book agent or 
a tramp, how you will revel in this seeming 
digression! God grant that no man in need 
may ever look wistfully at your house or 
at mine, and pass on with a shake of the head. 



On to the Yellowstone 249 

It is a subtle compliment to have book agents 
and tramps frequently at one's door. 

Am I really digressing? My theme is a 
trip on a great river. Well, kindness and 
nature are not so far apart, let us believe. 

Now this ranch-house looked hospitable; 
there was no mistaking it. Wherefore I 
deduce that the spirit of the inhabitants must 
pierce through and emanate from the sense- 
less walls like an effluviimi. Who knows 
but that every house has its telltale aura, 
plain to a vision of sufficient spiritual keen- 
ness? Perhaps some one will some day write 
a book On the Physio -Psychological Aspect 
of Houses : and there will be an advance 
sale of at least one copy on that book. 

At noon on the fourth day from the Pen and 
Key Ranch, we pulled up at the Mondak 
landing two miles above the mouth of the 
Yellowstone. We were thoroughly soaked, 
having dragged the boat the last two or three 
miles through the shallows and intermittent 
deeps of an inside channel. The outer chan- 
nel was rolling viciously in that eternal thing, 
the head wind. We had covered the first six 



250 The River and I 

hundred miles with a power boat (called so, 
doubtless, because it required so much power 
to shove it along!) in a little less than four 
weeks. During that time we had received 
no mail, and I was making a break for the 
post-office, oozing and feeling like an ani- 
mated sponge, when a great wind-like voice 
roared above me: ''Hey there I " 

I looked up to the hurricane deck of a 
steamer that lay at the bank taking on 
freight. A large elderly man, dressed like 
a farmer, with an exaggerated straw hat 
shading a face that gripped my attention at 
once, was looking down at me. It was the 
face of a born commander; it struck me that 
I should like to have it cast in bronze to look 
at whenever a vacillating mood might seize 
me. 

''Come aboard I " bawled the man under the 
ample hat. There was nothing in the world 
just then that I wished for more than my 
mail; but somehow I felt the will to obey — 
even the necessity of obeying. 

''You came from Benton?" he asked, when 
I had clambered up the forward companion- 



On to the Yellowstone 253 

way and stood dripping before the captain of 
the steamer Expansion. At this closer range, 
the strength of the face was even more impres- 
sive, with its eagle beak and its lines of firm- 
ness ; but a light of kindness was shed through 
it, and the eyes took on a gentle expression. 

"How did you find the water?" 

"Very low, sir; we cordelled much of the 
way." 

"I tried to get this boat to Benton," he said, 
"and got hung up on the rocks above Lismus 
Ferry." 

"And we drifted over them helter-skelter 
at midnight!" 

He smiled, and we were friends. Thus I 
met Captain Grant Marsh, the Grand Old 
Man of the Missouri River. He was freight- 
ing supplies up the Yellowstone for the great 
Crane Creek irrigation dam, sixty miles above 
the mouth. The Expansion was to sail on the 
following day, and I was invited to go along. 
Seeing that the Captain was short of help, 
I insisted upon enlisting as a deck hand for 
the trip. 

It was work, very hard work. I think I 



254 The River and I 

should prefer hod-carrying as a profession, 
for we had a heavy cargo, ranging from lum- 
ber and tiling to flour and beer; and there 
are no docks on the Yellowstone. The banks 
were steep, the sun was very hot, and the 
cargo had to be landed by man power. My 
companions in toil swore bitterly about every- 
thing in general and steamboating in particular. 

''How much are you getting?" asked a 
young Dane of me, as we trudged up the 
plank together. 

"Nothing at all," I said. 

He swore an oath of wonder, and stopped 
to look me over carefully for the loose screw 
in my make-up. 

" — nothing but the fun of it," I added. 

He sniffed and looked bewildered. 

"Did it ever occur to you," said I, "that a 
man will do for nothing what he would n't do 
for money?" 

I could see my conundrum playing peek-a- 
boo all about his stolid features. After that 
the Dane treated me with an air of superior- 
ity — ^the superiority of thirty dollars per 
month over nothing at all. 



F 





On to the Yellowstone 257 

We stopped twice to coal, and worked far 
into the night. There are no coal chutes on 
the Yellowstone. We carried and wheeled 
the stuff aboard from a pile on the bank. 
During a brief interval of rest, the young 
Dane announced to the others that I was 
working for nothing ; whereat questioning eyes 
were turned upon me in the dull lantern light ; 
whereupon I thought of the world-old mutual 
misunderstanding between the proletaire and 
the dreamer. And I said to myself: I can 
conceive of heaven only as an improbable con- 
dition in which all men would be willing and 
able to work for nothing at all. I had read 
in the Dane's face the meaning of a price. 
Heaving coal, I built Utopias. 

When the boat was under way, I sat in 
the pilot-house with the Captain, watching 
the yellow flood and the yellow cliffs drift 
past like a vision. And little by little, this 
old man who has followed the river for over 
sixty years, pieced out the wonderful story 
of his life — a story fit for Homer. That story 
may now be read in a book, so I need not tell 
it here. But I came to think of him as the 



258 The River and I 

incarnation of the river's mighty spirit; and 
I am proud that I served him as a deck hand. 

As we steamed out of the Yellowstone into 
the clear waters of the Missouri, the Captain 
pointed out to me the spot upon which Fort 
Union stood. Upon landing, I went there 
and found two heaps of stone at the opposite 
comers of a rectangle traced by a shallow 
ditch where of old the walls stood. This 
was all that remained of the powerful fort — ■ 
virtually the capital of the American Fur 
Company's Upper Missouri empire — ^where 
Mackenzie ruled — Mackenzie who was called 
King! 

Long slough grass grew there, and blue 
waxen flowers struggled up amid the rubble 
of what were once defiant bastions. I lay 
down in the luxuriant grass, closed my eyes, 
and longed for a vision of heroic days. I 
thought of the Prince who had been enter- 
tained there with his great retinue; of the 
regality of the haughty Scotchman who ruled 
there; of Alexander Harvey, who had killed 
his enemy on the very spot, doubtless, where 
I lay: killed him as an outraged brave man 



On to the Yellowstone 259 

kills — face to face before the world. I thought 
of Bourbonais, the golden-haired Paris of this 
fallen Ilium. I thought of the plague that 
raged there in '2>7^ ^"^^ of Larpenteur and his 
friend, grim, jesting carters of the dead! 

It all passed before me — the unwritten 
Iliad of a stronghold forgotten. But the 
vision would n't come. The river wind 
moaned through the grasses. 

I looked off a half-mile to the modem town 
of Mondak, and wondered how many in that 
town cared about this spot where so much 
had happened, and where the grass grew so 
very tall now. 

I gathered blue flowers and quoted, with 
a slight change, the lines of Stevenson: 

But ah, how deep the grass 
Along the battlefield! 



CHAPTER VIII 

DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE 

T^HE geographer tells us that the mouth of 
the Missouri is about seventeen miles 
above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the 
Yellowstone is near Buford, North Dakota. 
It appeared to me that the fact is inverted. 
The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and 
the Yellowstone empties directly into the 
Mississippi ! 

I find that I am not alone in this opinion. 
Father de Smet and other early travellers 
felt the truth of it; and Captain Marsh, who 
has piloted river craft through every navi- 
gable foot of the entire system of rivers, hav- 
ing sailed the Missouri within sound of the 
Falls and the Yellowstone above Pompey's 
Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main 
stem and the Missouri a tributary. 

Where the two rivers join, even at low 
260 



Down from the Yellowstone 261 

water, the Yellowstone pours a vast turbulent 
flood, compared with which the clear and 
quieter Missouri appears an overgrown rain- 
water creek. The Mississippi after some 
miles obliterates all traces of its great western 
tributary; but the Missouri at Buford is 
entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few 
hundred yards. All of the unique character- 
istics by which the Missouri River is known 
are given to it by the Yellowstone — its tur- 
bulence, its tawniness, its feline treachery, its 
giant caprices. 

Examine closely, and everything will take 
on before your eyes either masculine or 
feminine traits. Gender, in a broad sense, is 
universal, and nothing was created neuter. 
The Upper Missouri is decidedly female: 
an Amazon, to be sure, but nevertheless not a 
man. Beautiful, she is, alluring or terrible, 
but always womanlike. But when you strike 
the ragged curdling line of muddy water 
where the Yellowstone comes in, it is all 
changed. You feel the sinewy, nervous might 
of the man. 

So it is, that when you look upon the Mis- 



262 The River and I 

souri at Kansas City, it is the Yellowstone 
that you behold ! 

But names are idle sounds; and being of a 
peace-loving disposition, I would rather with- 
draw my contention than seriously disturb 
the geographical status quo I Let it be said 
that the Upper Missouri is the mother and 
the Yellowstone the father of this turbulent 
Titan, who inherits his father's might and 
wonder, and takes through courtesy the 
maiden name of his mother. There! I am 
quite appeased, and the geographers may 
retain their nomenclature. 

At Mondak, Luck stood bowing to receive 
us. The Atom I had suffered more from con- 
tact with snags and rocks than we had sup- 
posed. For several hundred miles her intake 
of water had steadily increased. We had 
toiled at the paddles with the water half-way 
to our knees much of the time; though now 
and then — by spasms — we bailed her dry. 
She had become a floating lump of discourage- 
ment, and still fourteen hundred miles lay 
ahead. 

But on the day previous to our sailing, a 



Down from the Yellowstone 265 

nervous little man with a wistful eye offered 
us a trade. He had a steel boat, eighteen 
feet long, forty inches beam, which he had 
built in the hours between work and sleep 
during the greater part of a year. 

His boat was some miles up the Yellowstone, 
but he spoke of her in so artless and loving a 
manner — as a true workman might speak — • 
and with such a wistful eye cast upon our 
boat, that I believed in him and his boat. 
He had no engine. It was the engine in our 
boat that attracted him, as he wished to make 
a hunting trip up river in the fall. He stated 
that his boat would float, that it was a dry 
boat, that it would row with considerable 
ease. ''Then," said I, '*paddle her down to 
the mouth of the Yellowstone, and the deal is 
made." After dark he returned to our camp 
with a motor boat, ready to take us to our new 
craft, Atom II. 

Leaving all our impedimenta to be shipped 
by rail, that is. Bill, the tent, extra blankets, 
phonograph — everything but a few cooking- 
utensils, an axe, a tarp, and a pair of blankets 
— the Kid and I got in with the little man 



266 The River and I 

and dropped down to the Yellowstone. The 
new boat was moored under a mud bank. 
I climbed in, lit a match, and my heart leaped 
with joy. She was staunch and beautiful — a 
work of love, which means a work of honesty. 
Fore and aft were air-tight compartments. 
She had an oil tank, a water tank, engine 
housing, steering wheel, lockers. She was 
ready for the very engine I had ordered to be 
shipped to me at Bismarck. She was dry as 
a bone, and broad enough to make a snug 
bed for two. 

The little man and the motor boat dropped 
out into the gloom and left us gloating over 
our new possession, sending thankful rings 
of tobacco smoke at the stars. When the 
first flush of triumph had passed, we rolled up 
in the bottom of the boat, lulled to sleep by 
the cooing of the fusing rivers, united under 
our gunwale. Such a sleep — a dry sleep! 
and the sides of the boat protected us against 
the chill night wind. 

And the dawn came — shouting merrily like 
a boy! I once had a chum who had a habit 
of whistling me out of bed now and then of a 



Down from the Yellowstone 269 

summer morning, when the birds were just 
awakening, and the dew looked like frost on 
the grass. And the sun that morning made 
me think of my old boy chum with his blithe, 
persistent whistling. For the first hard stage 
of the journey was done; all had left me but 
a brave lad who would take his share of the 
hardships with a light heart. (All boys are 
instinctively true sportsmen!) And before 
us lay the great winding stretch of a savage 
river that I had loved long — the real Missouri 
of my boyhood. 

A new spirit had come upon us with the 
possession of the Atom II — the spirit of the 
forced march. For nearly a month we had 
floundered, trusting to a sick engine and ineffi- 
cient paddles. Now we had a staunch, dry 
boat, and eight-foot oars. We trusted only 
ourselves, and we were one in the desire to 
push the crooked yellow miles behind us. 
During the entire fourteen hundred miles 
that desire increased, until our progress was 
little more than a retreat. We pitched no 
camps; we halted only when we could pro- 
ceed no further owing to sandbars encountered 



270 The River and I 

in the dark ; we ate as we found it convenient 
to do so. Regularly relieving each other at 
the oars, one sat at the steering wheel, feeling 
for the channel. And it was not long until I 
began to note a remarkable change in the 
muscles of the Kid, for we toiled naked to the 
waist most of the time. His muscles had 
shown little more than a girl's when we first 
swam together at Benton. Now they began 
to stand out, clearly defined, those of his chest 
sprawling rigidly downward to the lean ribs, 
and little eloquent knots developed on the 
bronzed surface of his once smooth arms. 
He was at the age of change, and he was grow- 
ing into a man before my eyes. It was good 
to see. 

All the first day the gods breathed gently 
upon us, and we made fifty miles, passing 
Trenton and Williston before dark. But the 
following day, our old enemy, the head wind, 
came with the dawn. We were now sailing 
a river more than twice the size of the Upper 
Missouri, and the waves were in proportion. 
Each at an oar, with the steering wheel lashed, 
we forged on slowly but steadily. In mid- 



Down from the Yellowstone 273 

stream we found it impossible to control the 
boat, and though we hugged the shore when- 
ever possible, we were obliged to cross with 
the channel at every bend. When the waves 
caught us broadside, we were treated to many 
a compulsory bath, and our clothes were 
thoroughly washed without being removed. 
An ordinary skiff would have capsized early in 
the day, but the Atom II could carry a full 
cargo of water and still float. 

By sunset the wind fell, the river smoothed 
as a wrinkled brow at the touch of peace. 
Aided by a fair current, we skulled along in 
the hush of evening through a land of vast 
green pastures with "cattle upon a thousand 
hills." The great wind had spread the 
heavens with ever deepening clouds. The 
last reflected light of the sun fell red upon the 
burnished surface of the water. It seemed 
we were sailing a river of liquified red flame; 
only for a short distance about us was the 
water of that peculiar Missouri hue which 
makes one think of bad coffee colored with 
condensed milk. 

Slowly the colors changed, until we were 



274 The River and I 

in the midst of a stream of iridescent opal 
fires; and quite lost in the gorgeous spectacle, 
at length we found ourselves upon a bar. 

We got out and waded around in water 
scarcely to our ankles, feeling for a channel. 
The sand was hard; the bar seemed to extend 
across the entire river; but a thin rippling 
line some fifty yards ahead told us where it 
ended. We found it impossible to push the 
heavy boat over the shallows. The clouds 
were deepening, and the night was coming 
rapidly. Setting the Kid to work digging 
with an oar at the prow, I pushed and wrig- 
gled the stem until I saw galaxies. Thus 
alternately digging and pushing, we at last 
reached navigable depths. 

It was now quite dark. Low thunder was 
rolling, and now and then vivid flashes of 
lightning discovered the moaning river to us — 
ghastly and forbidding in the momentary 
glare. We decided to pull in for the night; 
but in what direction should we pull? A 
drizzling rain had begun to fall, and the sheet 
lightning glaring through it only confused 
us — more than the sooty darkness that show- 



Down from the Yellowstone 275 

ered in upon us after the rapid flashes. We 
sat still and waited. In the intermittent 
silences, the rain hissed on the surface of the 
river like a shower of innumerable heated 
pebbles. Ahead of us we heard the dull 
booming of the cut banks, as the current 
undermined ponderous ledges of sand. 

Now, a boat that happens under a falling 
cut bank, passes at once into the region of for- 
gotten things. The boat would follow the 
main current; the main current flows always 
under the cut banks. Hov/ long would it 
take us to get there? Which way should we 
pull? Put a simpler question: In which way 
were we moving? We had n't the least 
conception of direction. For us the night had 
only one dimension — out I 

Finally a great booming and splashing 
sounded to our left, and the boat rocked 
violently a moment after. We grasped the 
oars and pulled blindly in what we supposed 
to be the opposite direction, only to be met 
by another roar of falling sand from that 
quarter. 

There seemed to be nothing to do but have 



276 The River and I 

faith in that divinity which is said to superin- 
tend the goings and comings of fools and 
drunkards. Therefore we abandoned the oars, 
twiddled our thumbs, and let her drift. We 
could n't even smoke, for the rain was now 
coming down merrily. The Kid thought it 
a great lark, and laughed boisterously at our 
predicament. By flashes I saw the drenched 
grin under his dripping nose. But for me, 
some lines written by that sinister genius, 
Wainwright, came back with a new force, and 
clamored to be spoken: 

** Darkness — sooty, portentous darkness — 
shrouds the whole scene; as if through a horrid 
rift in a murky ceiling, a rainy deluge — 'sleety 
flaw, discolored water ' — streams down amain ^ 
spreading a grisly spectral light, even more hor- 
rible than that palpable nights 

At length the sensation of sudden stopping 
dizzied us momentarily. We thrust out an 
oar and felt a slowly sloping bar. Driving 
the oar half-way into the soft sand, we wrapped 
the boat's chain about it and went to bed, 
flinging the tarp over us. 

A raw dawn wind sprinkled a cheerless 



Down from the Yellowstone 277 

morning over us, and we got up with our 
joints grinding rustily. We were in the midst 
of a desolate waste of sand and water. The 
bar upon which we had lodged was utterly- 
bare. Drinking a can of condensed milk 
between us, we pushed on. 

That day we found ourselves in the country 
of red barns. It was like warming cold 
hands before an open grate to look upon 
them. At noon we saw the first wheat-field 
of the trip — an undulating golden flood, 
dimpled with the tripping feet of the wind. 
These were two joys — quite enough for one 
day. But in the afternoon the third came — 
the first golden-rod. My first impulse was 
to take off my hat to it, offer it my hand. 

That evening we pulled up to a great bank, 
black-veined with outcrops of coal, and 
cooked supper over a civilized fire. For 
many miles along the river in North Dakota, 
as well as along the Yellowstone in Montana, 
these coal outcrops are in evidence. Doubt- 
less, within another generation, vast mining 
operations will be opened up in these localities. 
Coal barges will be loaded at the mines and 



278 The River and I 

dropped down stream to the nearest railroad 
point. 

We were in the midst of an idylHc country — 
green, sloping, lawn-like pastures, dotted 
sparsely with grotesque scrub oaks. Far 
over these the distant hills lifted in filmy blue. 
The bluffs along the water's edge were streaked 
with black and red and yellow, their colors 
deepened by the recent rains. Lazy with a 
liberal supper, we drifted idly and gave our- 
selves over for a few minutes to the spell of 
this twilight dreamland. I stared hard upon 
this scene that would have delighted Theo- 
critus; and with little effort, I placed a half - 
naked shepherd boy under the umbrella top 
of that scrub oak away up yonder on the 
lawny slope. With his knees huddled to his 
chin, I saw him, his fresh cheeks bulged with 
the breath of music. I heard his pipe — 
clear, dream-softened — the silent music of my 
own heart. Dream flocks sprawled tinkling 
up the hills. 

With a wild burst of scarlet, the sunset 
flashed out. Black clouds darkened the vis- 
ible idyll. A chill gust swept across stream. 



Down from the Yellowstone 279 

showering rain and darkness. Each at an 
oar, we forged on, until we lost the channel in 
the gloom. At the first peep of day we were 
off again, after a breakfast of pancakes, 
bacon, and coffee. 

We were gradually becoming accustomed 
to the strain of constant rowing. For at 
least sixteen hours a day we fought the wind, 
during which time the oars were constantly 
dipping; and very often our day lengthened 
out to twenty hours. We had no time-piece, 
and a night of drifting was divided into two 
watches. These watches we determined 
either by the dropping of a star toward the 
horizon, or by the position of the moon when 
it shone. On dark nights, the sleeper trusted 
to the judgment of his friend to call when the 
watch seemed sufficiently long. Daily the 
water fell, and every inch of fall increased 
the difficulty of travelling. 

We were now passing through the country 
of the Mandans, Gros Ventres, and Ricarees, 
the country through which old Hugh Glass 
crawled his hundred miles with only hate to 
sustain him. To the west lay the barren 



28o The River and I 

lands of the Little Missouri, through which 
Sully pushed with his military expedition 
against the Sioux on the Yellowstone. An 
army flung boldly through a dead land — a 
land without forage, and waterless — a laby- 
rinth of dry ravines and ghastly hills! Sully 
called it "hell with the lights out." A mag- 
nificent, Quixotic expedition that succeeded! 
I compared it with the ancient expeditions — 
and I felt the eagle's wings strain within me. 
Sully ! There were trumpets and purple 
banners for me in the sound of the name! 

Late in the evening we reached the mouth 
of the Little Missouri. There we found one 
of the few remaining mud lodges of the an- 
cient type. We landed and found ourselves 
in the midst of a forsaken little frontier town. 
A shambling shack bore the legend, ''Store," 
with the "S" looking backward — perhaps 
toward dead municipal hopes. A few tumble- 
down frame and log shanties sprawled up the 
desultory grass-grown main street, at one end 
of which dwelt a Mandan Indian family in 
the mud lodge. 

A dozen curs from the lodge resented our 



Down from the Yellowstone 281 

intrusion with canine vituperation. I thrust 
my head into the log-eased entrance of the 
circular house of mud, and was greeted with 
a sound scolding in the Mandan jargon, 
delivered by a squaw of at least eighty years. 
She arose from the fire that burned in the 
centre of the great circular room, and ap- 
proached me with an "I-want-your-scalp'* 
expression. One of her daughters, a girl 
dressed in a caricature of the white girl's gar- 
ments, said to me : "She wants to know what 
you 've got to trade." To this old woman 
of the prairie, all white men were traders. 

''I want to buy," I said, "eggs, meat, 
bread, anything to eat." 

The old woman looked me over with a 
whimper of amused superiority, and disap- 
peared, soon reappearing with a dark brown 
object not wholly unlike a loaf of bread. 
''Wahtoo," she remarked, pointing to the 
dark brown substance. 

I gave her a half-dollar. Very quietly she 
took it and went back to her fire. "But," 
said I, "do you sell your bread for fifty cents 
per loaf?" 



282 The River and I 

The girl giggled, and the old woman gave 
me another piece of her Mandan mind. She 
had no change, it appeared. I then insisted 
upon taking the balance in eggs. The old 
woman said she had no eggs. I pointed to a 
flock of hens that was holding a sort of 
woman's club convention in the yard, dis- 
cussing the esthetics of egg-laying, doubtless, 
while neglecting their nests. 

The old lady arose majestically, disap- 
peared again, and reappeared with three eggs 
I protested. The Mandan lady forthwith 
explained (or at least it appeared so to me) 
all the execrable points in my character. 
They seemed to be numerous, and she ap- 
peared to be very frank about the matter. My 
moral condition, apparently, was clearly de- 
fined in her own mind. I withdrew in haste, 
fearing that the daughter at any moment 
might begin to translate. 

We dropped down river a few miles, pre- 
pared supper, and attacked the dark brown 
substance which the Indian lady had called 
"wahtoo." At the first bite, I began to 
learn the Mandan tongue. I swallowed a 



Down from the Yellowstone 283 

chunk whole, and then enlightened the Kid 
as to a portion of the Mandan language. 
"Wahtoo," said I, "means 'indigestible'; it is 
an evident fact." Then, being strengthened 
by our linguistic triumph, we fell upon the 
dark brown substance again. But almost 
anything has its good points; and I can 
conscientiously recommend Mandan bread 
for durability! 

Once more we had a rainy night. The 
tarp, stretched across the boat, sagged with 
the water it caught, and poured little persist- 
ent streams upon us. The chief of these 
streams, from point of size, seemed con- 
sciously aiming at my ear. Thrice I turned 
over, shifted my position; thrice I was awak- 
ened by the sound of a merry brooklet pouring 
into that persecuted member. 

Somewhere in the world the white cock 
was crowing sleepily when we put off, stiff 
and soaked and shivering. 

Early in the day the fine sand from banks 
and bars began to lift in the wind. It 
smarted our faces like little whip lashes. 
Very often we could see no further than a 



284 The River and I 

hundred and fifty yards in any direction. 
Only by a constant, rapid dipping of the oars 
could the boat be held perpendicular to the 
choppy waves. One stroke missed meant 
hard work for both of us in getting out of the 
trough. 

Fighting every foot of water, we wallowed 
through the swells — past Elbow Woods, past 
Fort Berthold, past the forlorn, raggedy 
little town, ''Expansion." (We rechristened 
it ''Contraction"!) 

During the day the gale swept the sky 
clear. The evening air was crisp and invigo- 
rating. We cooked supper early and rowed 
on silently over the mirroring waters, between 
two vast sheets of stars, through a semi- 
lucent immensity. Far ahead of us a high 
cliff loomed black and huge against the 
spangled blue-black velvet of the sky. On 
its summit a dark mass soared higher. We 
thought it a tree, but surely a gigantic one. 
Approaching it, the soaring mass became a 
medieval castle sitting haughtily with frown- 
ing crenellations upon an impregnable rock; 
and the Missouri became for the moment a 



m 




Down from the Yellowstone 287 

larger Rhine. At last, rowing up under the 
sheer cliff, the castle resolved itself into a 
huge grain elevator, its base a hundred feet 
above the stream. 

Although it was late, we tied our boat, 
clambered up a zigzag path, and found our- 
selves in one of the oddest little towns in the 
West — Manhaven — one of the few remaining 
steamboat towns. 

The main street zigzagged carelessly 
through a jumble of little houses. One light 
in all the street designated the social centre of 
the town, so we went there. It was the 
grocery store — a general emporium of ideas 
and canned goods. 

Entering, we found ourselves in the midst 
of "the rustic cackle of the burg." I am sure 
the municipal convention was verbally re- 
constructing the universe; but upon our en- 
trance, the matter was abruptly laid on the 
table. When we withdrew, the entire con- 
vention, including the groceryman, adjourned, 
and accompanied us to the river where the 
general merits of our boat were thoroughly 
discussed by lantern light. Also, various 



288 The River and I 

conflicting versions of the distance to Bis- 
marck were given — each party being certain 
of his own infalHbiHty. 

There is something curious about the 
average man's conception of distance. Dur- 
ing the entire trip we found no two men who 
agreed on this general subject. After acquir- 
ing a book of river distances, we created 
much amusement for ourselves by asking 
questions. The conversation very often pro- 
ceeded in this manner: 

"Will you please tell us how far it is to 
So-and-So?'' 

"One hundred and fifty-two and a half 
miles!" (with an air of absolute certainty). 

"But you are slightly mistaken, sir; the 
exact distance is sixty-two and seven tenths 
miles!" (Consternation on the face of the 
omniscient informant.) 

Once a man told us that a certain town 
was one hundred and fifty miles down stream. 
We reached the town in an hour and a half ! 

Information and advice are the two things 
in this world that the average man will give 
gladly; and in ninety-nine cases out of a 




19 



Down from the Yellowstone 291 

possible hundred, he is mistaken. I am con- 
vinced that in most cases there is no lying 
intent. A curious chapter could be written on 
''The Psychology of Information and Advice." 

However, we had more success with the 
Indian. On day we came upon an old Man- 
dan buck and squaw, who were taking a bath 
in the river, doubtless feeling convinced that 
they needed it. The current took us within 
fifty yards of them. Upon our approach, 
they got out of the water and sat in the sand, 
quite as nude and unashamed as our much 
abused first parents before the apple ripened. 

''Bismarck — how far?" I shouted, standing 
up in the boat. 

The buck arose in all his unclothed dignity, 
raised his two hands, shut and opened them 
seven times, after which he lowered one arm, 
and again opened and shut a hand. Then 
with a spear-like tlirust of the arm toward the 
southeast, he stiffened the index finger in the 
direction of Bismarck. He meant "seventy- 
five miles as the crow flies." As near as I 
could figure it out afterward, he was doubt- 
less correct. 



2g2 The River and I 

At noon the next day we reached the mouth 
of the Knife River, near which stood the 
Mandan village made famous by Lewis and 
Clark as their winter quarters. Fort Clark 
also stood here. Nothing remains of the 
Fort but the name and a few slight indenta- 
tions in the ground. A modern steamboat 
town, Deapolis, occupies the site of the old 
post. Across the river there are still to be 
seen the remains of trenches. A farmer 
pointed them out to us as all that remains of 
the winter camp of the great explorers. 

In the late evening we passed Washburn, 
the "steamboat centre" of the upper river, 
fifty water miles from Bismarck. It made a 
very pretty appearance with its neat houses 
climbing the hillside. Along the water front, 
under the elevators, a half-dozen steamboats 
of the good old-fashioned type, lay waiting 
for their cargoes. Two more boats were 
building on the ways. 

Night caught us some five miles below the 
town, and, wrapping ourselves in our blankets, 
we set to drifting. I went on watch and the 
Kid rolled up forward and went to sleep. 



Down from the Yellowstone 295 

Aftei' sixteen hours of rowing in the wind, it 
is a difficult matter to keep awake. The night 
was very calm; the quiet waters crooned 
sleepily about the boat. I set myself the 
task of watching the new moon dip toward 
the dim hills ; I intended to keep myself awake 
in that manner. The moon seemed to have 
stuck. Slowly I passed into an impossible 
world, in which, with drowsy will, I struggled 
against an exasperating moon that had some- 
how gotten itself tangled in star-sheen and 
could n't go down. 

I awoke with a start. My head was hang- 
ing over the gunwale — the dawn was breaking 
through the night wall. A chill wind was 
rolling breakers upon us, and we were fast 
upon a bar. I awakened the Kid and we put 
off. We had no idea of the distance covered 
while sleeping. It must have been at least 
twenty miles, for, against a heavy wind, we 
reached Bismarck at one o'clock. 

We had covered about three hundred and 
fifty miles in six days, but we had paid well 
for every mile. As we passed under the 
Bismarck bridge, we confessed that we were 



296 The River and I 

thoroughly fagged. It was the thought of 
the engine awaiting us at this town that had 
kept us from confessing weariness before. 

I landed and made for the express office 
three miles away. A half -hour later I stood, 
covered with humility and perspiration, in 
the awful presence of the expressman, who 
regarded me with that lofty "God-and-I" air, 
characteristic of some emperors and almost 
all railroad officials. I stated to the august 
personage that I was looking for an engine 
shipped to me by express. 

It seems that my statement was insulting. 
The man snarled and shook his head. I have 
since thought that he was the owner of the 
Northern Pacific system in disguise. I sug- 
gested that the personage might look about. 
The personage could n't stoop to that ; but a 
clerk who overheard my insulting remark (he 
had not yet become the owner of a vast trans- 
portation system) condescended to make a 
desultory search. He succeeded in digging 
up a spark-coil— and that is all I ever saw of 
the engine. 

During my waiting at Bismarck, I had a 



Down from the Yellowstone 299 

talk with Captain Baker, manager of the 
Benton Packet Line. We agreed in regard 
to the Government's neglect of duty toward 
the country's most important natural thor- 
oughfare, the Missouri River. Above Sioux 
City, the Government operates a snag-boat, 
the Mandan, at an expense ridiculously dis- 
proportionate to its usefulness. The Mandan 
is little more than an excursion boat main- 
tained for a few who are paid for indulging in 
the excursions. A crew of several hundred 
men with shovels, picks, and dynamite, could 
do more good during one low water season 
than such boats could do during their entire 
existence. 

The value of the great river as an avenue 
of commerce is steadily increasing; and those 
who discourage the idea of ''reopening'* 
navigation of the river, are either railroad 
men or persons entirely ignorant of the 
geography of the Northwest. Captain Marsh 
would say, ''Reopen navigation? I 've sailed 
the river sixty years, and in that time navi- 
gation has not ceased." 

Rocks could and should be removed from 



300 The River and I 

the various rapids, and the banks at certain 
points should be protected against further 
cutting. A natural canal, extending from 
New Orleans in the South and Cincinnati in 
the East to the Rockies in the Northwest, is 
not to be neglected long by an intelligent 
Government. 

As a slow freight thoroughfare, this vast 
natural system of waterways is unequalled 
on the globe. Within another generation, 
doubtless, this all-but-forgotten fact will be 
generally rediscovered. 

Having waited four days for the engine, 
we put off again with oars. It was near sun- 
down when we started, hungry for those 
thousand miles that remained. When we 
had pulled in to the landing at Bismarck, we 
were like boxers who stagger to their comers 
all but whipped. But we had breathed, and 
were ready for another round. A kind of 
impersonal anger at the failure of another 
hope nerved us; and this new fighting spirit 
was like another man at the oars. Many of 
the hard days that followed left on our 
memories little more than the impress of a 



Down from the Yellowstone 303 

troubled dream. We developed a sort of 
contempt for our old enemy, the head wind — 
that tireless, intangible giant that lashed us 
with whips of sand, drove us into shallows, 
set its mighty shoulders against our prow, 
roared with laughter at us when, soaked and 
weary, we walked and pushed our boat for 
miles at a time. The quitter that is in all 
men more or less, often whispered to us when 
we were weariest: ''Why not take the train? 
What is it all for?" Well, what is life for? 
We were expressing ourselves out there on 
the windy river. The wind said we could n't, 
and our muscles said we should n't, and the 
snag-boat captain had said we could n't get 
down — so we went on. We were now in 
full retreat — retreat from the possibility of 
quitting. 

During the first night out, an odd circum- 
stance befell us that, for some hours, seemed 
likely to lose us our boat. As usual, we set 
to drifting at dark. The moon, close on its 
half, was flying, pale and frightened, through 
scudding clouds. However, the wind blew 
high, and the surface of the water was un- 



304 The River and I 

ruffled. There could be nothing more eerie 
than a night of drifting on the Missouri, with 
a ghastly moon dodging in and out among 
the clouds. The strange glimmer, peculiar 
to the surface of the tawny river at night, 
gives it a forbidding aspect, and you seem 
surrounded by a murmuring immensity. 

We were, presumably, drifting into a great 
sandy bend, for we heard the constant boom- 
ing of falling sand ahead. It was impossible 
to trace the channel, so we swung idly about 
with the current. Suddenly, we stopped. 
Otir usual proceeding in such cases was to 
leap out and push the boat off. That night, 
fortunately, we were chilly, and did not 
fancy a midnight ducking. Each taking an 
oar, we thrust at the bar. The oars went 
down to the grip in quicksand. Had we 
leaped out as usual, there would have been 
two burials that night without the customary 
singing. 

We rocked the boat without result. We 
were trapped; so we smoked awhile, thought 
about the matter, and decided to go to bed. 
In the morning we would fasten on our cork 



Down from the Yellowstone 307 

belts and reach shore — perhaps. Having 
reached shore, we would find a stray skiff and 
go on. But the Atom II seemed booked for 
a long wait on that quicksand bar. 

During the night a violent shaking of the 
boat awakened us. A heavy wind was blow- 
ing, and the prow of the boat was swinging 
about. It soon stopped with a chug. We 
stood up and rocked the boat vigorously. It 
broke loose again, and swung half-way around. 
Continuing this for a half-hour, we finally 
drifted into deep water. 

The next day we passed Cannon Ball River, 
and reached Standing Rock Agency in the 
late evening. Sitting Bull is buried there. 
After a late supper, we went in search of his 
grave. We found it after much lighting of 
matches at headstones, in a weed-grown 
comer of the Agency burying-ground. A 
slab of wood, painted white, bears the follow- 
ing inscription in black: ''In Memory of 
Sitting Bull. Died Dec. 15, 1890." 

Perched upon the ill-kept grave, we smoked 
for an hour under the flying moon. A dog 
howled somewhere off in the gloomy waste. 



3o8 The River and I 

That night the Erinnyes, in the form of a 
swarm of mosquitoes, attacked us lying in 
our boat. The weary Kid rolled and swore 
till dawn, when a light wind sprang up astern. 
We hoisted our sail, and for one whole day 
cruised merrily, making sixty miles by sunset. 
This took us to the town of Mobridge. 

I was charmed with the novelty of driving 
our old enemy in harness. So, letting the 
Kid go to sleep forward under the sail, I 
cruised on into the night. The wind had 
fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled. 
The crooning of the water, the rustling of the 
sail, the thin voices of bugs on shore, and the 
guttural song of the frogs, shocking the gen- 
eral quiet — these sounds only intensified the 
weird calm of the night. The sky was cloud- 
less, and the moon shone so brightly that I 
wrote my day's notes by its glow. 

The winking lights of Mobridge slowly 
dropped astern and faded into the glimmering 
mist. 



Lonely seamen all the night 
Sail astonished amid stars. 



L 




Down from the Yellowstone 3^1 

The remembered lines gave me the divine 
itch for quoting verses. I did so, until the 
poor tired Kid swore drowsily in his sleep 
under the mast. The air was of that invig- 
orating coolness that makes you think of 
cider in its sociable stage of incipient snappi- 
ness. Sleepy dogs bayed far away. Lone 
trees approached me, the motion seeming to 
belong to them rather than to me, and drifted 
slowly past — austere spectral figures. Some- 
where about midnight I fell asleep and was 
awakened by a flapping sail and a groaning 
mast, to find myself sprawling over the wheel. 
The wind had changed; it was once more 
blowing up-stream, and a drizzling rain 
was driving through the gloom. During 
my sleep the boat had gone ashore. I 
moored her to a drift log, lowered sail, flung 
a tarp over us, and went to sleep again. 
And the morning came — blanketed with 
gray oozing fog. The greater part of that 
day we rowed on in the rain without a 
covering. In the evening we reached Forest 
City, an odd little old town, looking wist- 
fully across stream at the youthful red 



312 The River and I 

and white government buildings of the Chey- 
enne Agency. 

Despite its name, this town is utterly tree- 
less! I once knew a particularly awkward, 
homely, and freckled young lady named 
"Lily." The circumstance always seemed 
grimly htmiorous to me, and I remembered it 
as we strolled through the town that could n't 
live up to its name. 

We were ravenously hungry, and as soon as 
possible we got our feet under the table of the 
town's dingy restaurant. A long, lean man 
came to take our orders. He was a walking 
picture of that condition known to patent 
medicine as ''before taking." I looked for 
the fat, cheerful person who should illustrate 
the effect of eating at that place, but in vain. 
When the lean man reappeared with the two 
orders carefully tucked away in the palms of 
his bony hands, I thought I grasped the eti- 
ology of his thinness. It was indeed a frugal 
repast. We took in the situation at a glance. 

"Please consider us four hearty men, if you 
will," I said kindly; "and bring two more 
meals." The man obeyed. My third order, 



Down from the Yellowstone 315 

it seems, met objections from the cook. The 
lean man, after a half audible colloquy with 
the presiding spirit of the kitchen, reported 
with a whipped expression that the house was 
"all out of grub." I regretted the matter 
very much, as I had looked forward to a long, 
unbroken series of meals that evening. 

Setting out at moonrise, just after sunset, 
we reached Pascal Island, fifteen miles below, 
before sleep came upon us in a manner not to 
be resisted. All night coyotes yelped from the 
hilltops about us, recounting their imme- 
morial sorrows to the wandering moon — a sort 
of Hecate worship. 

At sunset of the fifth day from Bismarck, 
we pulled in at Pierre. Although I had never 
been there before, Carthage was not more hos- 
pitable to storm-tossed ^neas than Pierre to 
the weather-beaten crew of the Atom. At a 
reception given us by Mr. Doane Robinson, 
secretary of the State Historical Society, I felt 
again the warmth of the great heart of the 
West. 

During the first night out of Pierre, the Kid, 
having stood his watch, called me at about 



3i6 The River and I 

one o'clock. The moon was sailing high. I 
grasped the oars and fell to rowing with a res- 
olute swing, meaning, in the shortest possible 
time, to wear off the disagreeable stupor inci- 
dent to arising at that time of night. I had 
been rowing some time when I noted a tree on 
the bank near which the current ran. Still 
drowsy, I turned my head away and pulled 
with a will. After another spell of energetic 
rowing, I looked astern, expecting to see that 
tree at least a mile behind. There was no 
tree in sight, and yet I could see in that direc- 
tion with sufficient clearness to discern the 
bulk of a tree if any were there. 

" I am rowing to beat the devil! " thought I ; 
''that tree is away around the bend already!" 
So I increased the speed and length of my 
stroke, and began to come out of my stupor. 
Some time later, I happened to look behind me. 
The tree in question was about three hundred 
yards ahead of the boat! I had been rowing up- 
stream for at least a half-hour in a strenuous 
race with that tree ! The Kid, aroused by my 
laughter, asked sleepily what in thunder 
tickled me. I told him I had merely thought 



Down from the Yellowstone 319 

of a funny story; whereat he mumbled some 
unintelligible anathema, and lapsed again into 
a snoring state. But I claim the distinction 
of being the only man on record who ever 
raced a half -hour with a tree, and finished 
three city blocks to the bad! 

The next day we rounded the great loop, in 
which the river makes a detour of thirty miles. 
Having rowed the greater part of the day, we 
found ourselves in the evening only two or 
three miles from a point we had reached in the 
morning. 

In a drizzling rain we passed Brule A^gency. 
In the evening, soppy and chilled, we were 
pulling past a tumble-down shanty built under 
the bluffs, when a man stepped from the door 
and hailed us. We pulled in. "You fellers 
looks like you needed a drink of booze," said 
the man as we stepped ashore. "Well, I got it 
for sale, and it ain't no harm to advertise!" 

This strenuous liquor merchant bore about 
him all the wretched marks of the stuff he 
sold. 

"Have your wife cook us two meals," said I, 
"and I '11 deal with you." 



320 The River and I 

"Jump in my boat," said he. I got in his 
skiff, wondering what his whim might mean. 
After several strokes of the oars, he pulled a 
flask from his pocket, took my coin and rowed 
back to shore. "Government license," he 
explained; "got to sell thirty feet from the 
bank." "Poor old Government," thought I; 
"they beat you wherever they deal with 
you!" 

We went up to the wretched shanty, built 
of driftwood, and entered. The interior was 
a melee of wash tubs, rickety chairs, babies, 
and flies. The woman of the house hung out 
a ragged smile upon her puckered mouth, 
etched at the lips with many thin lines of 
worry, and aped hospitality in a manner at 
once pathetic and ridiculous. A little girl, 
who looked fifty or five, according to how 
you observed her, dexterously dodged the drip 
from the cracks in the roof, as she backed 
away into a corner, from whence she regarded 
us with eyes already saddened with the ache 
of life. 

After my many days and nights in the 
great open, fraternizing with the stars and 



Down from the Yellowstone 323 

the moon and the sun and the river, it gave 
me a heartache to have the old bitter himian 
fact thrust upon me again. "What is there 
left here to live for?" thought I. And just 
then I noted, hanging on the wall where the 
water did not drip, a neatly framed marriage 
certificate. This was the one attempt at 
decoration. 

It was the household's 'scutcheon of respec- 
tability. This woman, even in her degrada- 
tion, true to the noblest instinct of her sex, 
clung to this holy record of a faded glory. 

Two days later, pushing on in the starlit 
night, we heard ahead the sullen boom of 
waters in turmoil. For a half -hour, as we 
proceeded, the sound increased, until it 
seemed close under our prow. We knew 
there was no cataract in the entire lower por- 
tion of the river; and yet, only from a water- 
fall had I ever heard a sound like that. We 
pulled for the shore, and went to bed with 
the sinister booming under our bow. 

Waking in the gray of dawn, we found our- 
selves at the mouth of the Niobrara River. 
Though a small stream compared with the 



324 The River and I 

Missouri, so great is its speed, and so tre- 
mendous the impact of its flood, that the 
mightier, but less impetuous Missouri is driven 
back a quarter of a mile. 

Reaching Springfield — twelve miles below — 
before breakfast, in the evening we lifted 
Yankton out of a cloud of flying sand. The 
next day Vermilion and Elk Point dropped 
behind; and then, thirty miles of the two 
thousand remained. 

In the weird hour just before the first faint 
streak of dawn grows out of the dark, we were 
making coffee — the last outdoor coffee of the 
year. Oh, the ambrosial stuff! 

We were under way when the stars paled. 
At sunrise the smoke of Sioux City was waving 
huge ragged arms of welcome out of the south- 
east. At noon we landed. We had rowed 
fourteen hundred miles against almost con- 
tinual head winds in a month, and we had 
finished our two thousand miles in two months. 
It was hard work. And yet 

The clang of the trolleys, the rimible of the 
drays, the rushing of the people! 

I prefer the drifting of the stars, the wan- 



Down from the Yellowstone 325 

dering of the moon, the coming and going of 
the sun, the crooning of the river, the shout 
of the big, manly, devil-may-care winds, the 
boom of the diving beaver in the night. 

I never felt at home in a town. Up river 
when the night dropped over me, somehow 
I always felt comfortably, kindly housed. 
Towns, after all, are machines to facilitate 
getting psychically lost. 

When I started for the head of navigation 
a friend asked me what I expected to find on 
the trip. " Some more of myself," I answered. 

And, after all, that is the Great Discovery. 

THE END 



American W aterways 



The Columbia River 

Its History — Its Myths — Its Scenery— Its Commerce 
By William Denison Lyman 

Professor of History in Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington 

430 pages, with 60 Illustrations and a Map. $3.50 net 

This is the first effort to present a book distinctively on the Columbia 
River. It is the intention of the author to give some special prominence 
to Nelson and the magnificent lake district by which it is surrounded. 
As the joint possession of the United States and British Columbia, and 
as the grandest scenic river of the continent, the Columbia is w^orthy of 
special attention. 

American Inland Waterways 

Their Relation to Railway Transportation and to the National 
Welfare ,' Their Creation, Restoration, and Maintenance 

By Herbert Quick 
262 pages, with 80 Illustrations and a Map, $3.50 net 

A study of our water highways, and a comparison of them with the 
like channels of trade and travel abroad. This book covers the question 
of waterways in well-nigh all their aspects — their importance to the na- 
tion's welfare, their relations to the railways, their creation, restoration, and 
maintenance. The bearing of forestry upon the subject in question is 
considered, and there is a suggested plan for a continental system of 
waterways. There are a large number of illustrations of the first interest. 

The Mississippi River 

And Its Wonderful Valley Twenty^' seven Hundred and 

Seventy^five Miles from Source to Sea 

By Julius Chambers 

Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society 
324 pages with 30 Illustrations and Maps, $3,50 net 

Lake George and Lake Champlain 

The War Trail of the Mohawk and the Battleground of France 

and England in their Contest for the Control of North America 

By W. Max Reid 

Author of " The Mohawk Valley," " The Story of Old Fort Johnson," etc. 

In Preparation: 

The Story of the Chesapeake By Rutheiia Mory Bibbins 



American Waterways 



The Romance of the Colorado River 

The Story of its Discovery in 1 540, with an account of the Later 
Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell 
through the Line of the Great Canyons. 

By Frederick S. Dellenbaugh 

Member of the United States Colorado River Expedition of 1S71 and 1872 

435 pages, with 200 Illustrations, and Frontispiece in Color, $3.50 net 

" His scientific training, his long experience in this region, and his eye 
for natural scenery enable him to make this account of the Colorado River 
most graphic and interesting. No other book equally good can be writ- 
ten for many years to come — not until our knowledge of the river is 
greatly enlarged." — The Boston Herald. 

" Mr. Dellenbaugh writes with enthusiasm and balance about his 
chief, and of the canyon with a fascination that make him disinclined to 
leave it, and brings him thirty years later to its description with undimin- 
ished interest. — New York Tribune. 






The Ohio River 

A COURSE OF EMPIRE 
By Archer B. Hulbert 

Associate Professor of American History, Marietta College, 
Author of " Historic Highways of America," etc. 

390 pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map, $3.50 net 

An interesting description from a fresh point of view of the interna- 
tional struggle which ended with the English conquest of the Ohio Basin, 
and includes many interesting details of the pioneer movement on the Ohio. 
The most widely read students of the Ohio Valley will find a unique and 
unexpected interest in Mr. Hulbert's chapters dealmg with the Ohio River 
in the Revolution, the rise of the cities of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Louis- 
ville, the fighting Virginians, the old-time methods of navigation, etc. 

"A wonderfully comprehensive and entirely fascinating book." — 
Chicago Inter-Ocean. 



American Waterways 



Narragansett Bay 

Is Historic and Romantic Associations and Picturesque Setting 
By Edgar Mayhew Bacon 

Author of " The Hudson River," " Chronicles of Tarrytown," etc. 

340 pages, with 50 Drawings by the Author, and with Numerous 
Photographs and a Map. 53.50 net 

Impressed by the important and singular part played by the settlers 
of Narragansett in the development of American ideas and ideals, and 
strongly attracted by the romantic tales that are inwoven with the warp 
of history, as well as by the incomparable setting the great bay affords for 
such a subject, the author offers this result of his labor as a contribution 
to the story of great American Waterways, with the hope that his readers 
may be imbued with somewhat of his own enthusiasm. 

** An attractive description of the picturesque part of Rhode Island. 
Mr. Bacon dwells on the natural beauties, the legendary and historical asso- 
ciations, rather than the present appearance of the shores." — N. Y . Sun. 



The Great Lakes 

Vessels That Plough Them, Their Owners, Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes / 
together with A Brief History of Our Inland Seas 

By James Oliver Curwood 
244 pages, with 72 Illustrations and a Map, $3,50 net 

This profusely illustrated book, as entertaining as it is informing, has 
the twofold advantage of being written by a man who knows the Lakes 
and their shores as well as what has been written about them. The gen- 
eral reader will enjoy the romance attaching to the past history of the 
Lakes and not less the romance of the present — the story of the great 
commercial fleets that plough our inland seas, created to transport the 
fruits of the earth and the metals that are dug from the bowels of the 
earth. To the business man who has interests in or about the Lakes, or 
to the prospective investor in Great Lakes enterprises, the book will be 
found suggestive. Comparatively little has been written of these fresh- 
water seas, and many of his readers will be amazed at the wonderful 
story which :his volume tells. 



jimerican W aterways 



The St. Lawrence River 

Historical — Legendary — Picturesque 
By George Waldo Browne 

Author of " Japan — the Place and the People," " Paradise of the Pacific," etc. 

385 pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map, $3.50 net 

While the St. Lawrence River has been the scene of many important 
events connected with the discovery and development of a large portion 
of North America, no attempt has heretofore been made to collect and 
embody in one volume a complete and comprehensive narrative of this great 
waterway. This is not denying that considerable has been written relating 
to it, but the various offerings have been scattered through many volumes, 
and most of these have become inaccessible to the general reader. 

This work presents in a consecutive narrative the most important 
historic incidents connected with the river, combined with descriptions of 
some of its most picturesque scenery and delightful excursions into its 
legendary lore. In selecting the hundred illustrations care has been taken 
to give as wide a scope as possible to the views belonging to the river. 



The Niagara River 

By Archer Butler Hulbert 

Professor of American History, Marietta College; author of " The Ohio River," 
"Historic Highways of America," etc. 

350 pages, with 70 Illustrations and Maps, $3,50 net 

Professor Hulbert tells all that is best worth recording of the history 
of the river which gives the book its title, and of its commercial present 
and its great commercial future. An immense amount of carefully ordered 
information is here brought together into a most entertaining and informing 
book. No mention of this volume can be quite adequate that fails to take 
into account the extraordinary chapter which is given to chronicling the 
mad achievements of that company of dare-devil bipeds of both sexes who 
for decades have been sweeping over the Falls in barrels and other 
receptacles, or who have gone dancing their dizzy way on ropes or wires 
stretched from shore to shore above the boiling, leaping water beneath. 



Jj merican Waterways 



The Hudson River 

FROM OCEAN TO SOURCE 

Historical — Legendary — Picturesque 

By Edgar Mayhew Bacon 

Author of " Chronicles of Tarrytown," " Narr.ig.msett Bay," etc. 

600 Pages, with 100 Illustrations, including a Sectional Map of the Hudson 
River, $3,50 net 

" Hie value of this handsome quarto does not depend solely on 
the attractiveness with which Mr. Bacon has invested the whole subject, 
it is a kind of footnote to the more conventional histories, because it 
throws light upon the life and habits of the earliest settlers. It is a study 
of Dutch civilization in the New World, severe enough in intentions to 
be accurate, but easy enough in temper to make a great deal of humor, 
and to comment upon those characteristic customs and habits which, while 
they escape the attention of the formal historian, are full of significance." 

Outlook. 



The Connecticut River 

AND THE 

Valley of the Connecticut 

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES FROM MOUNTAIN TO SEA 

Historical and Descriptive 

By Edwin Munroe Bacon 

Author of " Walks and Rides in the Country Round About Boston," etc. 

500 Pages, with 100 Illustrations and a Map, $3,50 net 

From ocean to source every mile of the Connecticut is crowded with 
reminders of the early explorers, of the Indian wars, of the struggle of the 
Colonies, and of the quaint, peaceful village existence of the early days of 
the Republic. Beginning with the Dutch discovery, Mr. Bacon traces 
the interesting movements and events which are associated with this chief 
river of New England. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



•V^*"iu 



